Projects

My research intersects museum studies, mobility studies, and art history. In my current work, I consider how museums respond to crises and institutional critique through mobile initiatives such as traveling exhibitions. I also consider questions of labor and representation as rendered through archives and current museum employment practices.

As a scholar, I work in the digital humanities as well as in more traditional written forms.

Dissertation

My dissertation considers outreach exhibitions, shows organized by museums for schools, libraries, and other public or civic places. I examine several case studies across the United States over the course of the twentieth century. I argue that these installations warrant critical examination both for their claims of improving audience access and because they represent an established convention of museums responding to critiques over their accessibility through mobile collections initiatives.

Digital Humanities

The Federal Community Art Center Initiative

This StoryMap represents a preliminary effort to map the Federal Art Project’s community art center initiative, one of the most ambitious arts-sharing programs of the New Deal. It is also a place for readers interested in CACs to share their research, with the eventual goal of collecting all data under a singular project. All participants who share their data will be credited as researchers and collaborators in this initiative.

The Roswell Museum

This Scalar book examines the early history of the Roswell Museum as a Federal Community Art Center. Featuring period documents and photographs, this book invites viewers to explore the Roswell Museum’s history in an open-ended manner that emulates the process of archival research while providing context through text and visualizations. This project was the final assignment for a Digital Humanities seminar, taken in the fall of 2018.

Changing World Views

This digital exhibit explores the complex histories of world maps as political, economic, and scientific objects through a selection of works from the Mariners’ Museum collection. The exhibit features more than twenty different examples spanning from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. This project developed out of an assistantship at the Mariners’ Museum during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Project members: Erika Cosme, website designer; Sara Woodbury, content writer; Bill Barker, map consultant.

Facemasks

Facemasks is a personal exhibit I created on Omeka in 2020 that meditates on the significance of masks in the era of COVID-19. I created this exhibit because drawing facemasks enabled me to process my thoughts and feelings about them as complex signs in contemporary American culture.

Events

Museums in Crisis

This half-day virtual symposium addressed museum responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises. I co-organized this event while serving as a graduate fellow at William & Mary’s Equality Lab, an academic space dedicated to fostering equity through the digital humanities.

Finding Home

This symposium explored the concept of “home” through the spatial and digital humanities. I co-organized this event while serving as a graduate fellow at William & Mary’s Equality Lab, an academic space dedicated to fostering equity through the digital humanities.

Other Projects

William & Mary/St Andrews Overview

During my 2021-2022 assistantship as the Graduate Fellow for the Joint Degree Programme between William & Mary and the University of St Andrews, I compiled the first data-driven study of the Program and its professional trajectories. After creating an alumni network on LinkedIn, I compiled data on graduates regarding their current positions and geographic locations. I then synthesized this information into charts and other visualizations, grouping alumni by graduation year as well as field of study. Through this study, I provided my supervisors with an overview of the Joint Degree Programme and its professional outcomes to better meet student interests and needs.