Author: Emily Hayflick

The University Libraries, of the University of South Dakota (USD), seeks a teacher, scholar and public historian to serve as the Curator of the South Dakota Oral History Center. Through teaching, fieldwork, scholarship and public engagement, the successful candidate will advance the center’s mission of collecting, preserving and sharing oral histories of the people of the Northern Plains.

Integral to accomplishing this mission, the curator will collaborate with programs in the University Libraries, specifically Archives and Special Collections and Digital Humanities, as well as departments and programs across campus, especially the departments of History and Native Studies, and the Institute of American Indian Studies.

The curator will strive to advance the center’s relationships with tribal communities in South Dakota and the region, elevate the visibility and impact of the center throughout the state, region and nation, and move the center towards greater engagement with the profession of oral history.

Responsibilities include:
Teaching:

• Develops and delivers credit-bearing courses in oral history, oral history orientations and workshops for academic and community audiences, and library and research skills orientations and programming for USD courses and the community.
• Develops and supervises credit-bearing internships in the field of oral history.

Scholarship:

• Designs, leads and executes research projects through the collection, preservation and dissemination of oral histories.
• Presents and publishes in the field of oral history.
• Seeks and secures grants to advance a program of scholarship, as well as the preservation of and access to oral histories held by the center.
• Engages with the discipline and practice of oral history, e.g., ethics, research with tribal communities, copyright and the uses and roles of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.

Preservation and Access:

• Uses national standards, best practices and local policies and procedures to ensure the preservation, organization, transcription, description and digital access to oral histories.
• Provides research support and assistance to individuals seeking to use oral histories held by the center.

Service:

• Collaborates with organizations in South Dakota, the region and nation to develop oral history projects and workshops, as well as serves on committees of the library, and/or the university, and/or professional societies.

Minimum Qualifications include:
• Ph.D. in History, Native Studies, Anthropology, English or a relevant field within the humanities or social sciences; or dual master degrees—M.A. or M.S. in Oral History with a M.A or M.S. in History, Native Studies, Anthropology, English, Library & Information Science, or another relevant field within the humanities or social sciences.
• A record of undergraduate and/or graduate teaching in the field of history, or another field of the humanities, or a relevant field in the social sciences.
• A record of fieldwork in oral history.
• A record of experience in using descriptive metadata schemas for cataloging oral histories.
• Demonstrated experience with technologies used in recording, transcribing, editing, digitizing, and cataloging oral histories.
• Evidence of a strong public service orientation, ability to work independently, project management skills, and strong oral/written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications include:
• A record of undergraduate and/or graduate teaching in the field of oral history, and/or substantially integrating oral history in humanities and/or social sciences courses.
• A record of scholarship in the field of oral history, including publishing peer-reviewed articles.
• A record of developing policies and practices for research with marginalized communities.
• Experience with digital humanities methodologies and tools in one or more of the following areas: textual analysis, mapping, timelines, multimedia exhibits, or podcasting.
• A record of securing grants and funding for oral history projects and scholarship.
• A record of managing oral history projects.
• A record of engaging community audiences through oral history projects.
• Managing and supervising students, including graduate assistants, and/or staff.

Position reports to the Dean of the University Libraries.
Salary is $70K-$80K, commensurate with qualifications

More here.

Material Storytelling: Student Reflections on Object-Based Research

By Neo Khambule, Tiffany Huang, and Amanda J. Guzmán

Introduction:

Each summer, the Public Humanities Collaborative (PHC), a 10-week summer research program by the Center of Hartford Engagement Research (CHER), aims to provide Trinity College undergraduates with opportunities to contribute to faculty and Hartford community partner projects while building skillsets in archival analysis and digital scholarship. Assistant Professor in Anthropology, Amanda Guzmán recently acquired two small object assemblages, consisting of 20^th century folk costume from China and archaeological pottery and stone material from Puerto Rico.  These assemblages were gathered by Guzmán respectively through donation and loan for use as anthropological teaching collections. While considering that many universities have museums and object labs that foster the study of museum anthropology through hands-on study, she decided to employ these assemblages as a platform to train a pair of PHC students in object-based research through an experimental pedagogical trial period to underpin the establishment of a forthcoming Trinity College Anthropology Object Lab. The resulting summer 2024 faculty project was entitled, “Material Histories: Object Digitization and Institutional Storytelling as Practice.”

This blog describes our itinerary as two anthropology majors learning to work with objects and tell their stories.

Research Process:

While we shared a common project goal of object-based research and public writing, we were immediately prompted to consider our positionalities to/with our respective assemblages of focus. Huang’s interest in objects had been cultivated by early personal exposure to the Chinese material culture owned by her grandparents, while Khambule from South Africa held cross-cultural experiences from living in six countries and had interests in global materialities. Given her Chinese heritage, Huang was broadly acquainted with the cultural context in which her assemblage originated as she immediately recognized specific material elements in contrast to Khambule to whom the study of the Caribbean ancient past was a relatively new engagement. A crucial component of our training was the emphasis placed on intensive independent object observation or the analysis of objects in careful detail and regular taking of notes. The study of text label conventions at local museum exhibitions also helped to stage our early conceptions of what accessible object writing for multiple publics might yet look like.

We were advised to consider objects both individually and collectively as part of an assemblage. Close looking at both ourselves and our assemblages of focus as a first step laid a strong foundation by creating a critical lens for appreciating objects in their totality. This evoked a process of disentangling the potential biases and assumptions that we might bring to the work before delving into the existing body of external understandings of what has been / is defined as ‘notable’ standpoints of anthropological study. For example, Khambule noticed that she was initially drawn to stone objects with incised engravings in the Puerto Rican assemblage, but being aware of her bias ensured that research into the non-decorative objects in the assemblage were given equal attention, interest, and effort.

Continued reflection was a running theme in our work as we were asked, for example, to craft a list of online search terms for secondary research based on our object observations which we continued to refine as we built our background knowledge and skillsets in object documentation. As part of provenance research, we also conducted interviews with diverse stakeholders including current and former professors at our institution who had contributed objects to the emerging lab space as well as past student researchers. In one case, this involved a visit to a Puerto Rican contemporary art show at a nearby college gallery to better understand the positionality and art practice of one provenance stakeholder. As we began to formulate our interpretative interventions, we learned to respect the messiness and potential of multi-vocality in practice as we incorporated stakeholder perspectives and narratives as part of our growing data sets.

Project Deliverables:

As college students who produce writing mainly in class contexts, we were eager to have the outlets to present our research and findings with potentially wider audiences of relevant source communities, students and researchers. We aimed to develop informative, engaging content to reflect multiple possible standpoints of group or individual interest. The public presentation of our object-based research was to be organized across multiple formats: an ArcGIS story map for each assemblage of focus, this co-authored blog for the Council of Museum Anthropology and a beta website for the Trinity College Anthropology Object Lab. Each format invited us to take a step back to frame our narration appropriately to its context. A story map should ideally work as a stand-alone analytical research summary leaning into the platform’s features, while a blog might work better as a short reflective piece, and a website typically does the practical job of describing a space’s institutional identity.

Following preliminary research assignments of visiting local museum exhibits and participating in a Sapiens public writing workshop, our process of building original digital representations began with object photography training in varied methods from a lightbox and turntable to a stationery overhead setup. Additionally, with the support of our library’s instructional design team, we were introduced to 3D digital modelling and the software Agisoft Metashape. Such skill sets helped us to approach material close looking in new ways as well as to build interactive digital storytelling elements. Photography promoted our collective act of slow looking which enabled us to better notice seemingly small object details that we might otherwise disregard as insignificant. That said the camera, itself, is a complicated tool of cultural representation in the history of anthropology. In the words of one visual anthropologist, “Who gets to be the recorder and the recorded? What gets translated by the camera and what remains lost in mediation?” We take seriously this privilege and responsibility as digital makers. In terms of audience engagement, we are creating, for example, a website feature in which visitors can click on a pinpoint on a map to view object images, digital models, and story maps from that geographic area. In this way, the gallery archives an iterative contextual database for existing research projects illustrating both varied regional assemblage case-studies and a range of storytelling modalities. Moreover, our design of this map gallery represents a collective commitment to supporting the object lab’s continued growth through the future research of fellow anthropology majors and our college peers. The map allows for researcher reflection on equitable patterns of cultural representation and institutional capacity given the realities of semester research periods and graduating students. In this way, we understood website prototyping not only as a project deliverable but also as an ongoing productive archival problematic around promoting the object’s lab continuity and sustainability that built both on comparable institutional case-studies of material curation and our experiences with/in object digital replication.

Concluding Thoughts:

Our material exploration within the ten-week framework of our college’s Public Humanities Collaborative revealed both the limitations and potential of object-based student learning templates. We transparently acknowledge the constraints posed by both our emerging skill sets and restricted summer project timeline, which eliminated the possibility, for example, of conducting a more scientific provenance analysis. Yet, our growing understanding of the various ways by which we might approach the observation and interpretation of objects practically demonstrated the value (and perhaps, more importantly, the challenge) of integrating diverse perspectives and experiences. Over the course of our research process, key, ongoing questions were raised about best practices around data access and stakeholder authority in community engaged student object-based research. How could we balance our ethical responsibility to stakeholders who loaned and gifted object collections for undergraduate learning through informed consent forms and regular project communication with calls to publicly share our research results and digital deliverables as student researchers through campus events with wider relevant stakeholder communities? How could we help to build and maintain multiple, long-term partnerships based on trust and mutual benefit with the transition of student researchers over the course of different research periods? These questions, which animated our internal group discussions, will begin to be addressed in a forthcoming mission statement and collection policy for the Trinity College Anthropology Object Lab.

The opportunity to conduct collections-based work as part of the exploratory pilot work of this departmental lab space for future anthropology majors has been an, at times, daunting but ultimately meaningful opportunity to not only analyze object assemblages in-depth but also to appreciate the complexities of being a material storyteller – weaving together object traces, associated oral and archival records alongside existing bodies of academic interpretation. Storytelling in our experience is complicated by the affordances of digital tools. Our improved proficiency with platforms like ArcGIS and Metashape will expand the accessibility of our object research, offering more tangible engagement than traditional forms of scholarship, but also necessitates important considerations around digital preservation management and ownership.

Our assemblage research and contributions to the new departmental lab space will continue to take shape throughout our college careers as we, for example, seek out reviewers and translators for our story map work. This summer’s digital work will in turn materialize as we also provide hands-on support for collection rehousing efforts into archival storage as the object lab is installed in a physical campus location. We hope that professors and students alike might benefit from our mediations here on how object-based work expanded and transformed our frames of reference for how we defined anthropological fieldwork and field sites through the lens of objects.

Blog Authors: 

Amanda J. Guzmán is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology and the co-director of the Center for Caribbean Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is a member of the inaugural 2024-2025 Rooted + Relational research cohort at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College engaging with the theme of “Archives, Memory, and the Present Past.”

An international student from Guangzhou, China, Tiffany Huang studies Anthropology and Economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In spring 2025, she will continue to build her object-based and digital storytelling skillsets as a research assistant with the Trinity College Anthropology Object Lab. Driven by a passion for museums and cultural anthropology, Tiffany intends to pursue a graduate degree.

Neo Khambule is a South African and Dutch student at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is currently studying Anthropology, Arabic, and Urban Studies. Neo has carried forward her research interests in object-based learning by studying Archaeology as a visiting student at the University of Oxford during the 2024 – 2025 academic year.

The North American Archaeology Department of the American Museum of Natural History offers Lab Researcher Internship positions in the North American Archaeology Lab (NAARCH Lab) for undergraduates, recent graduates, and graduate students. The interns will handle, store, and analyze a wide variety of artifacts from southeastern North America. Lab interns have the opportunity to work with faunal remains, lithics, Native American and European ceramics, Spanish colonial artifacts, and numerous other material types. Lab work typically consists of washing, cataloging, and organizing recent collections as well as data management. Additional projects have involved fine-grained sorting of excavated materials, non-destructive analysis using PXRF, and basic level artifact analysis and documentation. In addition to lab work, interns will also be considered for our ongoing fieldwork program in Georgia, USA (offered only for the fall and spring semester). Our fieldwork package offers room and board, transportation, and a monetary stipend for the duration of the trip, usually 2-3 weeks.

Individuals interested in joining the NAARCH Lab Internship should be highly motivated, patient, detail-oriented, and professional. Prior archaeological experience in either the field or in the lab is not necessary but will be a factor in our selection. The application form can be found at: http://www.amnh.org/research/anthropology/policies-links/internship-program, and is also attached at the bottom of the flyer. Remember to specify your interest in North American Archaeology on the application.

The internships are unpaid volunteer positions. A paid position is possible dependent on departmental funding. You may indicate your interest in a paid position on the application, but please be aware that checking only the paid position box may affect your chances. Course credit can be offered to those individuals currently enrolled in an accredited school of higher learning. The North American Archaeology Lab offers three internship sessions a year (summer, fall, and spring). The NAARCH department asks interns to commit three days a week, for a period of 10 weeks per semester. The number of interns accepted varies according to the research goals per semester.

Internship Application Deadlines 2024

• Summer Session (June to August), submit January 1 – March 1

• Fall Session (September to December), submit June 4 – August 4

• Spring Session 2025 (January to May): submit October 1 – December 1

More here. 

MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 17, 2025

The Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) is pleased to announce the launch of its
new Summer Research Fellowship Program. This program offers a unique opportunity
to spend 4-6 weeks in Santa Fe, New Mexico working on a research project related to
MOIFA’s renowned folk art collection of over 163,000 objects and MOIFA’s Bartlett
Library and Archives collections, and engaging with MOIFA staff members and the local
community. A vibrant city for art and culture, Santa Fe was the first city designated as a
Creative City in the United States by UNESCO, appointed in 2005 for its Craft and Folk
Art community. This pilot program will run for two years (2025-2026), with the fellowship
scheduled between June 1 st and August 31 st each year.
We welcome applications from scholars, independent researchers, public folklorists and
other public scholars, graduate students, nonprofit and community arts administrators,
and practitioners with a strong interest in folk and traditional arts, cultural traditions,
folklore, ethnomusicology, heritage studies, museum studies, and related fields. We
encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds.
Fellowship Award Includes:
* $2,500 Fellowship Honorarium
* Travel allowance to reimburse costs to and from Santa Fe
* Stipend for lodging, per diem allowance, and transportation during fellowship
Application and Selection Process:
Prospective fellows should apply through the online portal on MOIFA’s website.
Applicants will describe their research, how a MOIFA fellowship would enhance or
contribute to their work, how their interest in folk and traditional arts, cultural heritage,
and/or museums developed, and which areas of the museum collection they are most
interested in exploring. Information about MOIFA’s collection and the Bartlett Library
and Archives is available online.
All complete applications will be reviewed by an interdisciplinary panel of scholars and
practitioners drawn from MOIFA and a range of universities and other cultural
institutions. They will be evaluated on the basis of the proposal’s conceptualization and
merit, the applicant’s ability to carry out the proposed research, the suitability of
selected materials in MOIFA’s collections and archives, the likelihood the research can
be completed in the requested time, and the project’s potential to increase knowledge of
MOIFA’s collections and archives, bring new perspectives to them, and enhance
meaningful public engagement.
For more information on the MOIFA Summer Research Fellowship see here .

26 October 2024, Interview via NPR

NPR’s Scott Simon speaks to director Mati Diop about her new documentary, “Dahomey.” The film follows the return of royal treasures plundered by French forces.

Job Summary

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University seeks an individual for the position of NAGPRA Coordinator to support the Peabody’s implementation of NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act).  This individual’s responsibilities help to further the Peabody’s institutional goals of ethical stewardship, including fostering relationship building, collaborative dialogue, and diverse perspectives. This is a 27 month term position reporting to the Associate Director of NAGPRA.

Position Description

• Works with sensitive collections and content which requires attentiveness to university and cultural protocols.
• Conducts and coordinates consultation, inventory research, and report production for implementation of NAGPRA work.
• Creates materials required for NAGPRA implementation and committees.
• Facilitates use of the collection for NAGPRA implementation and responds to inquiries about the collection in writing, by telephone, or during visits and according to NAGPRA implementation requirements.
• Coordinates with other Museum departments and representatives to facilitate consultation and physical transfer of collections under NAGPRA.
• Compiles and updates data on NAGPRA implementation, including documenting consultations and correspondence records and outcomes.
• Performs other duties as required.

Basic Qualifications

BA in a relevant discipline such as anthropology, archaeology, Indigenous or American studies, or museum studies and two years professional experience in a museum, archaeological, and/or indigenous heritage or research center.  Masters degree will be considered in lieu of experience requirement.

Additional Qualifications and Skills

• The position requires strong analytical writing and research skills with attention to detail and accuracy and the ability to synthesize multiple lines of information;
• Ability to work independently as well as within a team environment;
• Discretion and interpersonal skills
• Ability to manage multiple project timetables.
• Strong ties to North American Indigenous communities preferred.
• Knowledge of The Museum System (TMS) or other museum collections management systems and museum cataloguing procedures and descriptive standards preferred.
• An understanding of historic and contemporary approaches to museum collections and indigeneity and anthropological research practices and methodologies.
• Strong experience with NAGPRA implementation (consultation and inventory/report production) preferred.

The James W. Scott Regional Research Fellowships promote awareness and innovative use of archival collections at Western Washington University, and seek to forward scholarly understandings of the Pacific Northwest. Fellowship funds are awarded in honor of the late Dr. James W. Scott, a founder and first Director of the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, and a noted scholar of the Pacific Northwest region. Up to $1000 funding is offered to support significant research using archival holdings at WWU’s Center for Pacific Northwest Studies (CPNWS), a unit of Western Libraries Archives & Special Collections.

Fellowship Requirements

Applications are accepted from individuals in doctoral programs as well as individuals who have finished the PhD. Successful applicants will be expected to:

• Spend approximately one week examining CPNWS holdings in support of their research
• Share a presentation about some aspect of their research during the same calendar year in which the award is offered and accepted. Presentations will be recorded and made available to the public via WWU’s institutional repository, CEDAR (format of delivery may vary depending on topic or time of year)

Applications

CPNWS is currently accepting applications for the 2025 awards, with a deadline of January 31, 2025 and award announcements expected by the end of February 2025.

Applications must be submitted by email to Ruth.Steele@wwu.edu (please include “Scott Fellowship Application” in the subject line), and contain:

• Cover letter
• Curriculum Vitae
• Research plan outlining on-site use of CPNWS holdings and proposed presentation topic
• Two letters of recommendation

Detailed guides to archival collections at CPNWS can be accessed and searched on the Center’s website and the Archives West platform (please be sure to narrow results by name of repository, for example, “Western Washington University, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies”).

For more information about collections or the application process, please contact CPNWS Archivist Ruth Steele at Ruth.Steele@wwu.edu or (360) 650-7747. Funds will be awarded after a Fellow has conducted research at CPNWS and delivered their presentation. Applicants are advised that funds may be subject to taxation in accordance with the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and that they may require a U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number (i.e. SSN or ITIN) to receive funds.

More here. 

Transcultural Materiality in the Work of Magdalene Odundo

A Reflection on the 2023 Ivan Karp Workshop in Museum Anthropology, organized by the Council for Museum Anthropology

By Annissa Malvoisin, via Anthropology News, 12 September 2024

Spot-lit sweeping ceramic vases made by the artist Dame Magdalene Odundo were the centerpieces of the exhibition Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects presented at the Gardiner Museum from October 2023 to April 2024. Organized by Sequoia Miller and Dame Odundo, the presentation was a transhistorical and transcultural journey through Odundo’s methodology and approach to making her matchless ceramic vessels. Carbonized and orange-ochre works produced throughout her career highlighted the gallery, while objects from around the world huddled around them, creating a pendulum of inspiration clearly reflected in Odundo’s work. This transcultural encounter formed the basis of the exhibition and of the learnings I received during the second annual Council for Museum Anthropology’s Ivan Karp Workshop in Museum Anthropology during the 2023 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting in Toronto.

Following the inaugural Ivan Karp Worksop in Museum Anthropology in 2022 in Seattle, I had the privilege of participating in the succeeding iteration: Clay, Ceramics, Curation. Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects was a nucleus for the workshop, hosted with the Association of Black Anthropologists, to bring scholars and practitioners of varying disciplines to reflect upon collaborative curatorial approaches and storytelling through objects and materiality. The workshop was led by Senior Curator at the museum, Dr. Karine Tsoumis, and brought attendees on a material and visual journey through Odundo’s ceramic practice. Inspired by artistic and cultural outputs by communities in Africa, Europe, East Asia, and North America, Odundo’s cascading and gravity-defying vessels found grounding in multiple art forms—with inspiration from a Ladi Kwali stoneware jar to Greek Attic vases.

More here.