With the publication of Arab American Public History in February 2026, I have been reflecting on the questions that led me to write my chapter, “Arab American Genealogy Research as a Form of Public History.” I began by considering how Arab Americans engage with family history. That question quickly opened into a larger set of questions about how family history and public history intertwine: How do historians view genealogists? What does public history actually mean? And how do personal family stories become part of a larger historical narrative?
As I worked through those questions, I came to see the phrase “family history is public history” in two ways. Genealogy research is public history because it is historical work carried out by and with the public. Family history is also public history because it is how many of us first meet history: through stories, photographs, places, names, migrations, losses, and memories carried in our families.
From there, I found myself thinking not only about Arab American genealogy, but about family history more broadly. Conversations with genealogists, historians, clients, friends, and community members helped me think about how personal stories connect to public memory, and how individual family histories can illuminate larger histories of migration, community, place, identity, and belonging.
In my chapter, I argue that family history is one of the most accessible and widely practiced forms of public history. Genealogy brings members of the public into the active creation of historical knowledge, often outside academic spaces, through oral histories, family archives, community organizations, local history, DNA research, and the research, preservation, and sharing of stories passed from one generation to the next.
A child hearing a story about a parent’s youth, a grandparent’s migration, or a family’s connection to a particular city, village, neighborhood, or homeland is already beginning to understand the past. These stories may begin as personal memories, but they often carry larger histories of movement, loss, resilience, work, community, and belonging.
Writing the chapter also pushed me to think more deeply about the long-standing tension between genealogy and academic history. Genealogists are sometimes dismissed as hobbyists, but modern genealogical research, especially in the professional context, relies on evidence, documentation, source analysis, locality research, and written conclusions. In many ways, genealogists place individuals and families into historical and geographical context, helping us understand how larger events shaped everyday lives.
This is where family history becomes public history.
Public history asks us to think about how history is created, preserved, interpreted, and shared with and for the public, often beyond the academy.. Family history does that work every day. It begins at kitchen tables, in photo albums, in conversations with elders, in immigration files, in cemetery records, in village histories, in DNA matches, and in the stories people carry about where they come from. Through family history, people learn about migration, war, dispossession, labor, class, language, food, and belonging as they come to understand the lives of parents, grandparents, and ancestors.
I will be addressing this topic in greater depth in my upcoming May 13 NYG&B webinar, “Preserving Your New York Story: Family History as Public History.” The program will explore how family history research that begins with personal interest can become part of the larger story of our communities. It will also consider how preserving our own stories, especially those rooted in immigrant, diasporic, and underrepresented communities, helps create a more complete and inclusive history.
Family history is not just about the past. It is about how we understand the present, how we honor those who came before us, and how we make sure our communities and stories are not erased from the historical record.