Reflections: University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institution Certificate Program in Museum Scholarship & Material Culture

This post is part of the UMD Anthropology student reflections series. Amy Carattini is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Maryland where her current focus is on professional migration, transnational and global spaces, and political models of diversity. She is a research associate with Dr. Judith's Freidenberg's Immigrant Life Research Course Program (ILCRP): writing grants, developing exhibit material and conducting life history interviewing and analysis. She has also finished Maryland’s certificate program in Museum Scholarship and Material Culture, culminating in a summer fellowship at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum where she explored research methods involving material culture.

Amy Carattini, a graduate student in the anthropology department who is working on this study and helped to design the poster, points to some of the interviews done with immigrants, from a retired Peruvian international organization professional to an Argentinean doctoral student, an Uruguayan construction worker, and a Vietnamese restaurant manager and former boat person. (2012)

The museum certificate program challenged me to think critically about how to communicate and represent anthropological findings. I was introduced to issues facing anthropologists working in museum settings. While ideas about ethnographic representation have moved beyond the framework of social evolution and progress, there are still the lingering effects of older models that tend to rely more on monolithic perspectives. For example, although most of the cultural exhibits in the National Museum of Natural History have been re-conceptualized and no longer show culture through a series of tool classifications, the oldest cultural exhibit, Western Cultures, still retains a sense of linear progression. Then too, every year, the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage sponsors a Folklife Festival where different cultures from around the world are invited to come and show their craft to the public. They wear their traditional garbs and ply their trade all for interested audiences, recalling some of the earlier exoticism and entertainment of live cultural displays that were part of the World’s Fair exhibitions, ostensibly however, in the present, with more ethical motives. Also, UNESCO, with its emphasis on preserving World Heritage Sites has sometimes sparked controversy in an effort to restore a historical account of a bygone era.  The result, in its attempt to mimetically recreate, is akin that of understanding the “other” through maintaining difference in the past rather than its dynamism in the present. The museum certificate program has sensitized me to these nuances.

Further, the program has given me the opportunity to reflect on and creatively engage with the diversity found in individual perspectives. In my research, I focused on ethnographic representation through photography as 1) a way to display the individual in the context of larger social and cultural patterns and as 2) a platform and to encourage audience reflection and participation. The result was an exploration of the many cultural confluences that comprise social identity and continue to keep it in a state of flux through the ongoing process of cultural transmission. 

For my museum practicum, which is the culmination of the museum certificate, I decided to write a museum catalogue for Dr. Judith Freidenberg’s travelling exhibit The Immigrant Experience in Prince George’s County. The work included contextualizing carefully selected excerpts from interviews that could speak to the motivations for immigrating as well as to the adjustments to U.S. society. In so doing, I researched the social history connected to the individual narratives. Also, as part of the catalogue creation, I spoke with each of the immigrants that I selected, asking for their input into my research and interpretation of their interview as well as soliciting photographs from their personal collections to be paired with their interview excerpts. The result was a collaborative effort in creating the final product.

Ultimately, the museum certificate program challenged me to think more critically about the production of knowledge. In creating the catalogue, I had to think about how to keep the material alive and relevant through time and space with the goal of engaging current and future audiences in an open flow of communication. In so doing, I was also able to think about how the representation and continued production of knowledge intersects with policy, individual identity, community building, conceptions of race and ethnicity, and historical analysis. For my part, I’m excited to continue my participation in this type of work as it informs my growth as an academic with an interest in research applications.