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Bangarang

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About Bangarang

  • Birthday 09/14/1985

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  • Gender
    Female
  • Program
    Public History

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  1. Thank you for such a considered response and so many recommendations. I will certainly be researching all of the programs you've mentioned; Cooperstown was already a program I'd been looking into if I went in more of a museum studies route, and the rest look excellent. As for my standing with material culture, I am interested in "stuff" as material sources within their own right, but more than illustrating the written documents, I like the idea of the "stuff" supplementing the written documents, filling in our knowledge gaps for the people and the aspects of life that don't make it into the written record. I'd like to curate collections that give a fuller sense of history than written documents would alone, or that help draw out aspects of written records. I also worked for two years as an archival assistant in my college's Archives, so I've gotten a good taste for linking private personal things like receipts and diaries into a bigger historical framework, and using the private and the personal as a means of supplementing our larger concept of historical events. Thank you again for your help, I really appreciate it!
  2. thank you, for a reply, and for a recommendation of the Winterthur Program. I am incredibly interested in material culture, so this is right up my alley. As far as "in the field" I meant specifically the world of museum work, not academia. I thought I'd made that clear from my previous post, but yeah, I'd love to join an archive or museum in a research/curatorial/etc position. I have two years of museum work under my belt, including grant writing, brainstorming exhibits and programming, writing copy for monthly calendar and newsletter, working with donors, etc. But I genuinely feel I'm lacking a great deal of the information I'd like to have, and that I won't be able to move forward into a genuinely research based historian position without more schooling. I completely agree with you about the worth of funding. I have no interest in being saddled with loans I cannot afford, and I do believe a good solid educational foundation is what matters, not the Ivy associations, whatever, what-have-you of an institution. I know that programs are not golden tickets, and that I'll need internships, networking, good work, and luck to get forward. That's why standing within context matters to me. I feel like I'm better situated to succeed if I'm better situated to get meaningful internships and meet great people, and the program I attend will affect those things. As to my specific interests, I'm afraid that I'm very interested in just about everything relating to preservation of materials, which is a terrible answer, but I am very interested in the sociological/cultural relationship between people and created environments/objects and the cyclical nature of these relationships. I'm sorry if I'm not expressing that entirely clearly, I hope that sounds reasonable. Honestly, I think I need to do a lot more reading, and apply next year, because I don't feel I have my research goals fully articulated. A short sharp answer would be, "I want to get in as a means of wedging a little stepping stool under the next rung on the ladder" but honestly, two years time commitment should be worth more than that, so I think this is going to be a year of fact-finding and refining. I had been veering away from History programs with museum studies concentrations as I've been worried that professors and resources wouldn't be committed enough supporting a public history angle, but I'd love to hear more of your argument that a regular history program with some internships may be the way to go. On a side note, I became interested in researching Public History programs rather than Museum Studies partly because I'm much more interested in the historic record than in art history and partly because what I did turn up seemed to echo many of your complaints regarding public history programs. It does seem there is a lot of saturation in this area of interest
  3. Just to try and revive this, two programs I'm interested in are the ones at UC Riverside and Brown. Any takers? I'd really appreciate any and all thoughts you'd have on the subject.
  4. Hey guys, I realize there's an older question along these lines, and apparently an even older thread that covers the topic, but the link to that even older thread does not work. So at the risk of being redundant, I'd like to ask again: Does anyone out there have a particular recommendation towards public history programs, especially MA's? I've been looking into schools listed through the Public History Resource Center, but I'd love to get a better sense of how programs are regarded in the field. As for myself, I have a BA in History, spent the last two years working at a children's museum as their Arts and Education Specialist (not directly related, I know, but I did get to help design exhibits), and just volunteered over the summer with a two-month archaeological field school. I have also considered getting an MA in Historical Archaeology, but I really think I see myself more on the historical research side of things (though being outdoors all day digging was pretty excellent). I do feel a bit that I am getting a late start in the game for Fall 2012, but I've already taken the GRE, and while I haven't talked with profs yet about recommendations, I feel like I've still got enough of a head start to catch up. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
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