This award supports the establishment of the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution to provide an intensive four-week program to train anthropology graduate students to use museum objects in their research. Students will learn to analyze museum collections in light of anthropology's current research agendas, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches developed over the past twenty-five years. The training will take advantage of the Smithsonian Institution's vast anthropology collections and related resources, allowing students a hands-on experience working with museum specimens on individual projects. The Institute will focus on experiential learning, combining elements of a field school with classroom/laboratory training.
Anthropology collections at the Smithsonian and other museums represent an enormous national legacy, assembled over generations to document world cultures and serve anthropological research. However, many potential researchers are not effectively utilizing museum collections because they do not know how to approach or evaluate this type of data, which presents distinct challenges.
The Institute will train 36 graduate students over the three year course of the grant, leading to better research design and methodology in research on museum collections and an increase in theses and publications effectively utilizing museum objects. Through development and sharing of curriculum materials, it will serve as a model to encourage wider teaching of museum anthropology research methods and development of similar programs at university museums. The broader goal of the program is to use museums more effectively as sites for the production of knowledge. Increased productive use of collections will allow anthropology to capitalize on the investment made by former generations, as well as engage in research of interest and value to the communities where this material originated.
Museum collections of anthropological material are an American treasure. They engage and inspire millions of Americans through exhibits and programs, serving as an important educational resource for communicating knowledge about world cultures to a wide audience. The objects that museums preserve also constitute an invaluable scientific record of cultural practices, past and present. They constitute a databank of physical material that can be examined, analyzed, and reassessed again and again as questions and methods change over time. Objects document dynamic aspects of cultural behavior that are not recorded in written sources; they are one of the few ways to gain information directly from past societies that did not have writing. However, these collections are not being used to their full potential. Many interested researchers cannot effectively utilize museum collections because they lack the skills and methods to approach or evaluate this type of data, which presents distinct research challenges. Graduate courses in museum-based research are almost non-existent in the United States and seldom can offer the hands-on learning that is essential for object study. Students who wanted to tap into the research potential of American museums either have had to study abroad or to train themselves. We are not fully capitalizing on the investment the nation has made in the assembly and maintenance of museum collections. The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) was created to fill this need. This award from the National Science Foundation supported the first three summer sessions (2009-2011) and subsequent program assessment. Based in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology, it is an intensive four-week residential program providing training in museum research methods. In each year it accepted 12 graduate students from across the country who showed promise to contribute to development of the field of cultural anthropology through object research. During this grant SIMA developed a rigorous program involving a mix of formal class time, individual research work, and extensive mentoring. Support from the National Science Foundation covered student participant costs and assembly of a specialized faculty of visiting experts, who joined Smithsonian scholars whose time was contributed to SIMA. The Smithsonian offered its extensive collections as a laboratory for learning, giving students an opportunity for in-depth work with one of the greatest anthropological research collections in the world. Through this grant SIMA provided training for 36 students from 25 universities and 17 states. It established a solid training model, and former participants are now beginning to attain university positions where they are in turn using SIMA as a model for their own teaching, working to close the training gap. The larger goal of SIMA is to create a new generation of American scholars using anthropological collections effectively in their research. These new scholars will revitalize museums as sites where knowledge is produced as well as disseminated.
