Museum Studies Commons^™

Postcolonial Museums And National Identity In Vietnam, Reese W. Hollister

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Following the Vietnam Wars, the nation of Vietnam used museums to construct its identity for both national and international audiences. This paper first investigates the colonial origins of Vietnam's museum landscape, stemming from French ethnographic museums in colonial Indochina. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism then serves as the theoretical framework to understand Vietnamese nation's collective, historical memory of the French and American Wars. This paper concludes that the Vietnamese national identity is based on the shared trauma and socialist solidarity that arise from anti-colonial resistance. Museums both construct and preserve this national identity, …

Bibliography, Christy L. Spurlock

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Christy Spurlock.

Re-Curation And Recognition: Addressing The Curation Crisis Through The Garnet Ghost Town, Jocelyn A. Palombo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As universities, federal curation facilities, public museums, and private collections struggle to create space on their shelves curators and archaeologists continuously evaluate what must continue to be stored and what needs to be deaccessioned. Utilizing a collection housed at the University of Montana I explore strategies for combating this issue. The collection originates from the Garnet Ghost Town and has been in the university’s care since its excavation. The objectives of this project are to obtain new information and incorporate innovative techniques to learn more about the collection itself and provide an updated analysis to one of Montana’s most complete …

The Rehabilitation Of Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills: A Case For A Unique Public-History Site And Open-Air Museum, Nina Elsas

Master of Arts in Art and Design Theses

By the 1990s, Atlanta's historic Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills (The Mill) had fallen into extreme disrepair. After operations ceased, the 19th-century factory suffered from years of neglect, forcing the decision to either demolish or rehabilitate its industrial structures. Fortunately, a choice was made to convert the majority of Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills’ buildings into residential lofts, despite the significant financial risk. The research related to this study aims to address whether the successfully renovated Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills could identify as an open-air museum.

Answers to this question were obtained from Primary Sources (such as interviews and …

An Imaginary* Interview With A Philippines Collections Museum Donor, Camille Ungco

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Ontological distance is the dehumanization that emerges from uninterrogated coloniality between colonized subjects and the oppressive systems. This distancing has occurred in the histories of U.S. teachers both domestic-based and abroad, especially in Southeast Asia. In Steinbock-Pratt’s (2019) historiography on the relationships between early 1900s U.S. teachers and their Filipinx students, ontological distance was “The crux of the colonial relationship was intimacy marked by closeness without understanding, suasion backed by violence, and affection bounded by white and American supremacy” (Steinbock-Pratt, 2019, p. 214). This dehumanizing psychological or ontological distance existed during U.S. colonial regimes abroad, specifically in Southeast Asia and …

The Dance Of Domesticity: How Gender Constructs Obscure Lived Experience At Museums, Marcy J. Botwick

Museum Studies Theses

My thesis focuses on Mary Shepard Greene Blumenschein and Ernest L. Blumenschein, married artists born in the late 1860s. Ernest Blumenschein was an important regional artist and member of the Taos Society of Artists (TSA). Paintings by Blumenschein and other TSA members promoted tourism in the Southwestern United States through annual exhibitions and their use in advertising the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF). Mary Greene Blumenschein was an award-winning painter and illustrator whose work focused on images of women at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, she is now a secondary and obscure figure in art history. …

“A New And Seductive Temptation”: The Introduction Of Museum Catalogue Stalls And The Emerging Focus On Public Education, Jamie Larkin

CCI Articles and Research

This paper examines the introduction of catalogue stalls among London-based national museums and galleries in the 1910s, using the British Museum as an extended case study. It seeks to frame this initiative as an important moment in the history of museums as they shifted from predominately scholastic institutions, largely unresponsive to the needs of their visitors, to ones with a growing awareness of their role in public education. By being prominently positioned in museum lobbies, the catalogue stall provided a focal point for visitors to extend their cultural experience through educational or souvenir materials, and can be seen as part …

Curating Conflict: The Material Record Of The Philippine-American War At The Oregon Historical Society, Silvie M. Andrews

Dissertations and Theses

1898 marked the beginning of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines and the formation of the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), an organization that would later inherit a vast collection of Philippine and Spanish war booty from the defunct Battleship Oregon Museum. This thesis will explore the meaning of this war booty by recreating the context around its collection, accession, interpretation, and later descent into obscurity, drawing on the Battleship Oregon Collection of the OHS Research Library and institutional records of the OHS Museum as well as secondary sources that explore the colonial context around museum collecting. The first chapter will show …

Strategies Used In Translating The Fantastic Events In Venus Dari Kota Ille, Ria Rizkya, Arif Budiman

International Review of Humanities Studies

The fantastic (le fantastique) is a literary genre that originated from France, which has a specific characteristic of an ambiguous event that cannot be found in other literary works from other countries that introduce similar genres. This study discusses the translation strategies used to translate these fantastic events in Venus dari Kota Ille, the Indonesian translation version of the fantastic story of La Vénus d'Ille by Mérimée (1837). The objective of this research is to see what strategies the translator use in translating the fantastic events that are present in the French version that contained uncanny elements and whether these …

Climate In Crisis: Art And Activism At The Brooklyn Museum, Nancy B. Rosoff

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This paper explores the Brooklyn Museum’s activism-centered museum practice as exemplified by the exhibition Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas. The exhibition presents the collections of Indigenous art from North, Central, and South America through the lens of climate change and its impact on the survival of Indigenous people. The main thesis is that the current climate emergency is part of a longer history of environmental colonialism that began five hundred years ago. For millennia, Indigenous communities throughout the Americas have maintained profound and expansive relationships with the natural world. However, beginning in the 1500s, Europe’s …

Manufactering Music: 140 Years Of Gretsch Legacy, Georgia Southern Museum

Gretsch Exhibitions by Georgia Southern University

No abstract provided.

Accessing History In Gettysburg: A Study Of Accessibility Of Public History Institutions, Theodore J. Szpakowski

Student Publications

Based on field observation and interviews with staff, this paper evaluates the state of accessibility in five Gettysburg public history institutions in the summer of 2022. Evaluation criteria for field observations were determined based on a critical disability studies approach, focusing on disabled people’s accounts of these and similar institutions. The research revealed areas of success and failure in current accessibility measures, as well as ongoing projects to increase accessibility in most institutions. The rubric developed here could be refined and used as a research tool or an institutional planning tool.

Commemorating The Past: Nebraska Museum Practices In Interpreting, Memorializing, And Mythologizing History, Carissa Dowden

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Commemorative landscapes are spaces that have a symbolic meaning to a group of people and are often identified by a government or by a local community. These landscapes act as “symbolic conduits” to both express and legitimize interpretations of the past, though geographic interpretations are largely limited to the American South and Europe (Alderman and Dywer 2012). This research seeks to better understand landscapes of commemoration and memorialization in Nebraska, specifically how memories of the West and pioneers are constructed and represented within heritage and history institutions. Applying methods in geography, public history and digital humanities, this research considers both …

Jesse James' Hideout Or Civil War Midden?, Steven Meyer, Tim Evers, Ben Ebert

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Whether the infamous outlaw Jesse James (1847-1882) ever lived in Iron County Missouri during his post-Civil War crime spree is a highly debated issue shrouded in legend and myth. A plot of land called “The Hideout” in Southern Iron County is a prime source for these legends to be tested. Archaeologists Benjamin Ebert, Steven Meyer, and Tim Evers will attempt to answer the question “Could Jesse James have stayed at the Hideout?” Iron County is steeped in rich history dating back to the Civil War, and other historic landmarks add credence to the legends
and help push tourism and preservation …

North Of The Grid: The Black Experience Of 17th -19th Century Rural New York City, Stephanie E. Barnes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, transatlantic slavery was a racial project and template for race-making which created a country that relied on institutions that were organized and performed through social stratification. Today, the nation still operates on systemically racist institutions that have benefited whites while disadvantaging ‘others.’ The narratives presented in American history are rooted in whiteness and benefit the white community while marginalizing nonwhites. Over two hundred years of slavery history in this country has been purposely manipulated and left out. My research focuses on using an historical archaeological framework to research and share the lives of free and enslaved …

Shape-Note Music Traditions Of The Shenandoah Valley, Tyler Brinkerhoff

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Though over the years documents about shape-note music from Joseph Funk and Sons and the Ruebush-Kieffer companies have been spread throughout many archives, they are now being brought back together online in one digital archive. Interpreting the information contained in these documents and the ledger book of subscribers for The Southern Musical Advocate and Singer’s Friend magazine through graphs and maps makes the information contained in them easier to access for researchers. The collaboration between a physical museum site, a website, and a Omeka site allow for multiple ways to learn about the history of shape-note music in the Shenandoah …

Preservation And Public History In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Walker Bray

Honors Theses

This paper is an exploration of the history of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all Black community in the Mississippi Delta formed by freedmen in the wake of Reconstruction. This paper also discusses the ways in which Mound Bayou citizens are working to preserve their history and make it known to a wider audience. In particular, this work discusses the recently opened Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History and related efforts to restore and preserve historic structures in Mound Bayou. In addition, this work also seeks to explore ways in which the University of Mississippi can effectively supplement …

Constructing An Interpretive Master Plan For The Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site, Alysha M. Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site is owned and operated by the Texas Historical Commission. Interpretation of the site spans the 1864-1940 period and includes stories of groups that once met there for social events, including the United Confederate Veterans. In recent years, the Confederate Reunion Grounds has seen a decline in visitation as well as a reduction in staff. This capstone project focuses on creating an interpretive master plan to accommodate the change. This interpretive master plan aims to address the changes that have occurred over the past seven years and set staff goals and objectives.

The Met Costume Institute: Evolution, Metamorphosis, And Cultural Phenomenon, Shelby Kanski

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

The Political Power Of Museums: A Case Study On The Museum Of Spanish Colonial Art, Emily Snyder

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Museums hold an esteemed position that grants validity to the objects and history held within them based solely on their inherent authority as institutions. This makes the analysis of what museums portray incredibly important given the extent of people’s belief that they hold the power to determine authoritative truth concerning art, history, and society. In the late 1970s, museums underwent a period of change tied to becoming more pluralistic. Beginning in the 1990s, many museums touted their postcolonial status in the wake of their inclusion of and collaboration with traditionally outsider communities. Despite this change appearing to create more diverse …

Extended Reality And The Graphic Design Curriculum, Tina Korani, Meghan Saas, Samantha Tan

Frameless

VXR technology has seen significant growth in recent years across all commercial industries and is poised to continue that trend. The graphic design industry is embracing XR as a new medium, and XR skills are in high demand within the field. Institutions of higher education must adopt XR—and particularly AR—into the graphic design curriculum to keep pace with the industry. Several barriers are slowing this curricular adoption but can be overcome. Advances in AR technology have created an opportunity for its use as both a pedagogical tool and a creative medium. Integrating AR with traditional graphic design elements and principles …

(Witch) Crafting Identity: An Autoethnographic Analysis Of The Dutch National Identity Through Women In Haunted History, Hallie Kamosky

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This autoethnographic study analyzes the presentation of women in haunted history in order to dissect the construction of the Dutch national identity. Through a personal narrative experience, the art, museums, tourist enterprises, and physical locations that constitute the city of Amsterdam are put in conversation with one another in order to draw out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the Dutch narratives of progress. Firstly, the Spin Huis and the ghost story connected to it are juxtaposed to the City of Amsterdam’s narrative in order to draw out themes of sexual exceptionalism at the expense of foreign bodies. Next, the Amsterdam …

Lost Art And Lost Lives: Nazi Art Looting And Art Restitution, Sophia Gravenstein

Student Publications

During the Nazi Regime, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized an estimated one fifth of all art in Europe and more than 5 million cultural objects before 1945. The Nazis established control over the regime and furthered their racist ambitions through stealing art of any cultural or monetary value to them. They stole “degenerate” art in an attempt to annihilate “racially inferior” races, and “racially pure” art for the glorification of the “Aryan” race. Since the end of WWII, the return of Nazi-looted art to its original owners or their heirs has been an important avenue for remembrance of and …

The French Conundrum: The Unsettled Relationship Between The Colonial Past, Identity Construction, And Immigration In The Musée National De L’Histoire De L’Immigration, Sierra Ruby Newby-Smith

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This paper focuses on the intersection of identity, the colonial past, and immigration in France through the lens of the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. The museum, which opened in 2007 and is currently redesigning its permanent exhibition, has struggled to come to terms with France’s colonial past, a defining aspect of the museum as a result of its location and theme. This paper argues that the museum functions as a microcosm of France’s difficulty to address its colonial past while still maintaining its current national identity construction. Thus, this paper explores how the Immigration Museum is and has …

Mineral Displays As Embodiments Of Geologic Thought And Colonial Invisibility, Selby Hearth, Carrie Robbins

Geology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Mineral displays embodied how we think about minerals: as symbols of social status, scholarly tools, theological objects, and instruments of education. Mineral displays are also representations of how we don’t think about minerals: as human products embedded in wider human histories. This paper reviews the historical themes in mineral display, from the cabinets of curiosity of the Renaissance to modern museums, and articulates a major narrative that has been omitted from mineral display traditions: the human processes that bring mineral specimens from the ground to the display case, particularly Western colonialism and labour. Historically, mineral displays have been used to …

Reframing Leadership Narratives Through The African American Lens, Marion Missy Mcgee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Reframing Leadership Narratives through the African American Lens explores the context-rich experiences of Black Museum executives to challenge dominant cultural perspectives of what constitutes a leader. Using critical narrative discourse analysis, this research foregrounds under-told narratives and reveals the leadership practices used to proliferate Black Museums to contrast the lack of racially diverse perspectives in the pedagogy of leadership studies. This was accomplished by investigating the origin stories of African American executives using organizational leadership and social movement theories as analytical lenses for making sense of leaders’ tactics and strategies. Commentary from Black Museum leaders were interspersed with sentiments of …

Methods Of Memorialization: Holocaust Commemoration In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Kylee Bolinger

University Honors Theses

Memorials, both formal and informal, both private and public, have long participated in the pursuit to honor the victims of tragedy, disaster, or genocide. Memorial museums serve both to memorialize victims and to foster an environment conducive to reflection and education about these stories. Such memorial museums have especially made their mark after one of the most notable and devastating genocide events in history: the Holocaust in twentieth-century Europe. This thesis examines how memorialization methods utilized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) make up the American interpretation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the concept typically applied to how Germans deal …

Creating The Experience: Engaging Millennials In Museums With A Focus On Jewish Millennials And Museums, Sarah G. Drozda

Museum Studies Theses

In this research, I explore two main ideas: The relationship that millennials have with museums and what programming excites them into coming back to the museum. To do this, I did a background review of the motivations and passions of the millennial generation, as well as various programming that have engaged millennials in museums. As someone who is a millennial and passionate about Jewish museums and Jewish engagement, I focused my research on how museums can help to bring Jewish millennials closer to their heritage, culture, and Jewish identity. A good segment of Jewish millennials is not drawn to traditional …

Institutionalizing Identity: Examining The Louvre In Revolutionary And Napoleonic France, Emma Balda, Amy Woodson-Boulton

Honors Thesis

With the collapse of the French monarchy in 1789, France sought to solidify their sense of national identity in the wake of revolution. Since the late eighteenth century, museums have long been used to foster nationalism and belonging through the institutionalization of historical narratives-- the opening of the Louvre in 1793, and its transition from a royal palace to a palace of the people, served as a physical metaphor of the complete political transformation that occurred during the French Revolution. Existing literature examines the revolutionary nationalization of the Louvre as it relates to the concept of the modern museum and …

Preserving A Catholic Community: The History Of St. Anthony's Catholic Church In Weiner, Arkansas, Mary Jean Sitzer

Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the creation, and development of the cultural landscape of Catholics in Weiner, Arkansas, as a means to interpret and preserve the heritage of the people of the region’s religious and Germanic heritage and how that has shaped this part of the state. The dissertation focuses on the development of a plan for the historical preservation and interpretation of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church along with three buildings, to serve as the centerpiece for these heritage preservation activities. This potential historic district includes four physical elements: the church building built in 1935, the parochial school for religious education which …