Kudos for Summer 2022

Kudos to…  Erica Lehrer (MSP04) has launched a new website for her project, Thinking Through the Museum.  The project brings together university researchers, museum professionals, and members of diverse communities to respond to colonial legacies and other histories of injustice with new forms of engagement.   Erica also recently published an article related to material heritage, “Materiality and Holocaust Memory: Activating and Theorizing Poland’s Unquiet Places.”

Kudos to… Ksenya Gurshtein (MSP06) who co-edited a book that was published this December, Experimental Cinemas in State Socialist Eastern Europe (Eastern Europe Screen Cultures).

Kudos to… Helen Dixon (MSP07), along with ECU Department of Anthropology colleagues Ryan Schacht, Cindy Grace-McCaskey, Eric Bailey, and Charlie Ewen, were awarded National Science Foundation in Cultural Anthropology funding for the project “Gone and Nearly Forgotten: Reclaiming African American Heritage in Rural Southern Cemeteries.” Dr. Dixon will be in charge of the archival and public history components of the project and will complete this work in collaboration with undergraduate and graduate public history students at ECU.  Helen was also awarded a residential research fellowship for January – April 2022 at the Getty Villa, where she was a Getty Scholar for the 2021-22 theme “Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites: The Levant and the Classical World.”

Kudos to…  Monica Patterson (MSP07) wrote an article, “Toward a Critical Children’s Museology: The ‘Anything Goes’ Exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw,” that was published in the November issue of Museum and Society. 

Kudos to… Kate Donovan (MSP09) has been appointed Director of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley and Associate University Librarian for Special Collections. 

Kudos to…  Andrew Gurstelle (MSP09) who was recently promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Wake Forest University.  Andrew also continues his position as Academic Director of the Lam Museum of Anthropology, also at Wake Forest.

Kudos to…  John Kannenberg (MSP10), Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Portable Sound.  The Museum hosted its first academic conference, “Sound Beyond Music,” this past fall.

Kudos to…  Rebecca Bloom (MSP14) began a new position as Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs and Interpretation at the Southern Utah Museum of Art at Southern Utah University.

Kudos to…  Rachel Chamberlain (MSP14) was accepted into the Executive EdD of Higher Education program at Boston College.

Kudos to…  Caitlin Clerkin (MSP14) began a curatorial fellowship position at the Harvard Art Museums this past fall.

Kudos to… Alicia Juillet (MSP14) began a new position with the New York Mets as the Curator of the Mets Hall of Fame and Museum at Citi Field. 

Kudos to…  Susan Dine (MSP15) who published an article in Berghahn Journals.  “Critique, Dialogue, and Action: Museum Representation in Black Panther” can be viewed here. 

Kudos to…  Allan Martell (MSP15) who recently began a new position as Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at Indiana University. 

Kudos to…  Hannah Pröbsting (McMurray) (MSP15) curated a recent exhibition at Lausanne’s Museum of Photography.  “Ferenc Berko: Fascination with the Ordinary” presents 38 photographs from Berko’s career which spanned seven-decades. 

Kudos to…  Christina DiFabio (MSP16) who graduated with her PhD this past April and will begin as a Graduate Intern in Public Programs at the Getty Villa in September.  Christina has also accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Loeb Classical Library Foundation for 2023-2024. 

Kudos to… Mary Pena (MSP16) will begin a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton next year.  The fellowship is a joint placement with the School of Architecture and the Program in Latin America Studies.

Kudos to…  Felix Zamora Gomez (MSP16) has just begun an appointment at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.  For the coming year, Felix will be working as the Irving Stenn Jr. Fellow in Public and Digital Humanities and Museum Pedagogy.

Kudos to…  Jeremy York (MSP17) was recently selected as the Assistant Director of the University of Michigan’s Library Copyright Office. 

Kudos to…  Belinda Bolivar’s (MSP19) for her work with Umi’s Archive, an online archive and exhibition series that was the focus of Belinda’s practicum. The project emerged from Associate Professor Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s desire to create a series of online exhibitions featuring the story of her mother’s life and its connections to broader social happenings. Belinda contributed to this effort as a project and collections manager.

Kudos to… Cait Dyche (MSP19) completed a National Council for Preservation Education internship this summer with the NPS National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program. Over the course of 10 weeks, Cait worked with the visual information team to grow the program’s social media presence, publicize partner events and program announcements, and share stories of Freedom Seekers from across the nation. This work culminated in a month-long social media takeover event in celebration of International Underground Railroad Month – and it’s still happening through the end of September! To see the takeover content that Cait helped create, you can check out the NPS Network to Freedom Instagram account (@npsnetworktofreedom) and Facebook page, or you can visit the NPS International Underground Railroad Month webpage and click on the “Social Media Takeover” article series.

Kudos to…  Ayana Curran-Howes (MSP20) was a Simmons Intern at The Henry Ford last summer.  She was dedicated to researching, designing, and making community connections for a new educational market experience. Featuring goods provided by local growers, the market initiative will be hosted in Detroit’s Central Market Vegetable Building currently being reconstructed in THF’s Greenfield Village. Though her internship, Ayana contributed a number of insightful blog posts: on the MSP THF Capstone Project, on Flowers, and on the Vegetable Building Simmons Internship project.

Kudos to…  Chad Machinski (MSP21) was featured in the summer 2022 edition of LSA Magazine where, as a caretaker at Nichols Arboretum, Chad shares his thoughts about conservation.  Chad was also one of 8 students in Michigan sponsored by the Michigan Botanical Foundation to attend the Michigan Botanical Club’s Botany Foray which was held this past Memorial Day weekend.