Karen Sieber is a public historian and digital humanist specializing in community history, social justice history, labor history, Black history, and urban history. Her interdisciplinary research, curatorial work, and digital projects connect the public with the tools necessary to better understand, preserve and share the history, art, and culture all around them. Click a menu item above or linked text below to read publications, watch interviews, view exhibits, and more.
Her research and writing has been featured in or cited by the American Historical Association, the National Council for Public History, Jacobin, PBS, The Conversation, Smithsonian magazine, and the recent Gayle King CBS special “Tulsa 1921: An American Tragedy,” as well as numerous academic journals like the Labor and Working Class History Association’s LABORonline. She is best known as the creator of Visualizing the Red Summer, the most comprehensive archive and classroom resource on the Red Summer of 1919, now used on five continents and a featured resource of the National Archives, National History Day, National Council on Public History, and American Historical Association among others. She has consulted as a researcher for television shows and media outlets, and has curated numerous museum exhibits nationwide, including “H is For Hayti” about the thriving Black community in Durham, North Carolina, largely destroyed during urban renewal.
She is currently working on three veins of research: exploring the origins of class field trips and experiential place-based education in America; delving into the intellectual lives of hobos; and examining farm worker organizing in the nineteenth century South.
KAREN SIEBER 