Connecting with The Wright Brothers
I was honored to give a brief talk as part of the kickoff for Reading Across Rhode Island’s everyone-should-read-it book, David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. Here are the notes from my talk.
Considering the 9/11 Memorial Museum: One visit, three ways
(some advice I gave my students before our visit last week, updated after the visit) When you visit the museum—when you visit any museum—try to examine it in three different ways, to look at it through three different lenses. First, consider it as a member of the general public. Next, look at it with a critical eye, trained by your reading, museum experience, and theoretical concerns. And finally, think about it as an employee of the institution might: what works,…
A class about collections
We’re halfway through the semester, and my collections class is deep into the stamp exhibition project. I’m teaching a course titled “Museum Collecting and Collections.” There are three projects: the Brown University’s Library extensive stamp collections the paintings that came to Brown with the Annmary Brown Memorial, and scientific instruments scattered across Brown departments. In each case, we’re trying to understand the history of the collection, think about their potential use, do some cataloging, and propose a collections management and development plan. Today…
The dark ride (on search)
For a search engine to work well, it needs to know where to look. The streetlight effect offers a common metaphor. The drunk man searches under the streetlight because that’s where it’s easiest to find things. In a search of a museum collection database, we can search most easily, or only, in the categories that are well described, that we have good vocabulary for, that curators care about. I’d like to suggest another metaphor: the amusement park dark ride….
The Find-me-another machine (On Search)
[my presentation at the RISD Museum / Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology “On Search” Conference] I’d like to tell you about the new machine I just invented. It’s called the “find me another” machine. The portable version I brought with me happens to be just the right size for the objects we’ve heard about today. Here’s how it works. First, you set some sliding switches on the front of the machine. And then you take an object – a Maori feather…
Trajectory [a welcome to the new class of public humanities students] 2015]
Robyn asked me to give “something like a trajectory of how we’ve come to understand ‘public humanities’ within the program’s history,” connected to the work you’ll be doing with this semester. That’s a fair assignment for me, as someone who’s been part of that trajectory. I know Robyn won’t mind if I question her assignment a bit, consider her assumptions. (That’s what you’re supposed to do in graduate school, especially at Brown!) There are two questions to consider. First Question:…
Workshop with the NY Humanities Council Public Humanities Fellows
Earlier this week I met with the NY Council for the Humanities Public Humanities Fellows. This is a fairly new program (started by a former student, Leah Nahmias!) that connects PhD students at NY schools with local communities. The goals are ambitious: to bring humanities scholarship into the public realm, encourage emerging humanities scholars to conceive of their work in relation to the public sphere, develop scholars’ skills for doing public work, and strengthen the public humanities community in New…
Course for the fall: Introduction to Public Humanities
It’s that more-than-half-way through the summer inflection point when suddenly it seems that school starts too soon. It’s time to think about fall semester. One of my courses this fall is my usual Introduction to Public Humanities, the seminar for new MA students in the public humanities program, along with a few others who seem to have interesting things to say. At the end of last year’s course I asked the students to fill out a survey on the course. They graded each…
