Public History Students

Eliza Ahrens | M.A. Candidate
I graduated from the University of Iowa with degrees in Medieval History and Religious Studies. In an effort to get as much mileage as possible out of my in-state tuition, I added a minor in Anthropology and completed the museum studies certificate program. Although my senior year took me out of the history department for the majority of my coursework, I was constantly intrigued by the linkages I was finding between disciplines. I became interested in depictions of the Middle Ages in popular culture, and, particularly, medievalism in fantasy fiction for young adults. My experience in various museum education programs made me aware of the incredible power of Public History to draw meaningful connections between the past and present. I chose the program here at UMass because of its commitment to engaging diverse approaches advancing the field. I hope to gain experience teaching and writing history, and am thrilled to be surrounded by people who love history as much as I do. Last summer I completed an internship at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester during which I collaborated on the re-design of the Global Arms and Armor wing.

Christopher Benning | Ph.D. Candidate
I had a good sense of what I wanted to study in graduate school. I was concerned, however, that I would have to develop my own curriculum at my own peril. The information related to the Public History Program on the University of Massachusetts History Department website was nothing short of an epiphany. It articulated exactly my interest in a course of study combining theory and praxis that went beyond conventional programs in history and museum studies. Having studied at Amherst College, I was also keenly aware of the tremendous resources available through the Five College Consortium, both academically and culturally. For students of history, the Pioneer Valley is an embarrassment of riches in research opportunities and practical experience, whether archival, teaching or museum work. In terms of intellectual atmosphere and physical environment, Amherst has the cultural amenities of a cosmopolitan city without the urban hassles; it’s the best of both worlds and ideal for scholarship. Having lived in busy metropolises most of my life, I cherish Amherst’s quality of life, the accessibility of its resources, and its sense of community and place.

Jessica Frankenfield | M.A. Candidate

I am interested in museums for their ability to interpret history and culture to the public. I believe that objects can be particularly powerful in doing this, and my interest in material culture is rooted in that. My core interests are Early America and cultural history as well as American slavery. I am also fascinated by the ways that history is invoked over time in different ways, so historical memory and particularly the Colonial Revival are compelling subjects for me.

Before coming to UMass, I held jobs or internships at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Powel House through the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, the Montgomery County Historical Society, and the Pearl S. Buck House.

My field work during the first year of the M.A. program included web exhibit on Omeka about the Second Pan-African Congress, which made use of the University Special Collections and Archives' valuable holdings in the W.E.B. Du Bois papers, as well as exhibit panels for an activity in the History Workshop at Historic Deerfield on local silkworm cultivation in the 19th Century. In summer 2011, I was awarded the Elizabeth Perkins Fellowship in Museum Practice and Research at Museum of Old York in Maine. While working at Old York, I cataloged and created a finding aid for a recently donated collection, held in the museum's archives. I also assisted with research inquiries in the library.

Kate Freedman | Ph.D. Candidate
I received a BA in history from Hampshire College in 2004, an MLIS, with concentrations in information literacy education and archives management, from the University of Rhode Island in 2007, and an MA in public history from the University of Massachusetts in 2009. I am currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts. As a public historian I am very interested in how digital technologies are impacting the practice of history. I am a member of the NCPH Digital Media Group and have worked with a humanities faculty at UMass to help launch a digital humanities initiative here. I have experience in a variety of positions in the public history field, including archives management, reference librarianship, museum education, exhibit design, university education, and website and database development. I am interested in a career that combines education (either direct teaching or designing curriculum) and working with students and the public.

Amanda Goodheart | Ph.D. Candidate
My introduction to public history came in the form of an undergraduate museum studies internship at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea. As a history and secondary education major at Salve Regina University in historic Newport, RI, I was no stranger to museums and their potential to educate and inspire students of all ages. However, after my summer by the sea, I realized I wanted to pursue a graduate degree in public history as a means of blending my interests in education, history, and museums. I've been a public historian ever since. Over the past several years I've had the great privilege of working with museums and historical institutions across New England including Mystic Seaport, The Preservation Society of Newport County, The Newport Restoration Foundation, Historic Deerfield, Strawbery Banke Museum, and most recently, the Springfield Museums. I chose the UMass Public History Program for both for its reputation of combining theory and practice as well as its picturesque location in the heart of the historic Pioneer Valley. After graduate school, I hope to continue my work as a public historian working to bridge the gaps between K-12 education, academia, and museums through public programming, museum education, and curriculum development.

Jon Haeber M.A. Candidate

My deep interest in place-based history began with a Landscape Architecture course and a subsequent internship with National Geographic in 2003. Upon receiving English and Geography degrees from UC Berkeley in 2004, I joined the working world as a Managing Editor for a talented group of freelance marketing writers. In my free time, I moonlighted as a freelancer and quasi-historian --  nights at San Francisco State University gaining an academic background, weekends volunteering at historic sites in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. In 2011, our volunteer group of 11 received the George and Helen Hartzog Volunteer Group Award by the National Park Service.

In 2011, I published my first book, Grossinger's: City of Refuge and Illusion, which explored the unique microcosm of a Catskills resort in the early 20th century. History has also inspired my photography: Richard Nickel, Edward Burtynsky, and New Topographics have played a significant role. Occasionally, these photos appear on http://www.terrastories.com/bearings. 

I feel privileged to be part of the UMass Public History program, which is ideally located for my interest in 20th century American History, particularly the landscapes of consumption in the early 20th century. I plan to pursue a career writing for the public or teaching. 

Erik Ingmundson | M.A Candidate
I majored in American Studies at Wheaton College. During my senior year, I struggled to formulate a plan for life after graduation. Everything changed when I attended a non-profit job fair in the spring of 2006. A representative from the Nantucket Historical Association was there, recruiting historic interpreters to work for the upcoming season. On a whim, I decided to apply for the position. I had never worked at a museum or historic site before. However, I had experience in the performing arts, had studied history academically, and thought that leading interpretive tours (and living on Nantucket no less!) would be an interesting experience.

I was hired, and spent the summer leading tours at the Whaling Museum and several other historic properties. Towards the end of the summer, I was offered a permanent position as Senior Interpreter and Schools Coordinator. This proved to be an amazing opportunity, as it introduced me to the field of historic administration. I managed a staff of 35 interpreters, developed educational programs, recruited new staff, and managed the daily operations of several historic properties, including the Whaling Museum. I loved the job, and stayed for the next four years before coming to UMass.

The UMass Public History Program is a perfect fit, because it allows me to study twentieth-century American history (particularly the Cold War), while also doing coursework that will help prepare me for a career in historic administration. There is a great emphasis on learning both in and outside of the classroom, and a welcoming atmosphere that encourages collaboration among students.

This year, I collaborated with two colleagues to produce an exhibit titled "Becoming a Son of Great Barrington: W.E.B. Du Bois." The exhibit will be displayed in the lobby of the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington throughout the spring of 2011. This summer, I will continue honing my curatorial skills as an intern for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. I'll be working with the Curator of History and Research to help develop future exhibitions.

Jaimie Kicklighter | M.A. Candidate

I came to the UMass Public History Program all the way from Valdosta, Georgia. As a history major at Valdosta State University, I wrote an honors thesis examining the role of nostalgia in modern German film. This project introduced me to the powerful role of memory and its function in engaging the past from a present perspective. In the course of the project I also discovered the DEFA Film Library on the UMass campus and grew curious about the history program here. My interest in the field of public history grew when I began volunteering at the Valdosta State campus archives and got experience in digitization and display preparation. I hope to focus my public history training on archives and to continue pursuing my interest in memory. I will also continue studying German history, especially the history of modern Germany and German film, and plan to work with Jon Olsen.

Jessie MacLeod | M.A. Candidate
I first became interested in museums when I spent the summer after my freshman year of college working in the Furniture Study of the Yale University Art Gallery. I was already planning to be a history major, but I added material culture to my list of interests, taking several classes on American architecture and decorative arts and spending a summer as a Summer Fellow at Historic Deerfield. I also developed my love for archival research and writing while completing my senior essay on nineteenth-century American missionary children who were sent back to the U.S. to live, based on a collection of family papers at the Yale Divinity School Archives.

After graduating, I knew I wanted to continue doing history. I spent a year working at the New Haven Museum and Historical Society creating an online guide to their library's manuscript and photograph collections, as well as digitizing a large portion of their collections. I then moved down to Virginia to work as a researcher at Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison, which is undergoing a massive restoration and refurnishing project. In these positions I gained valuable exposure to the world of archives and museums, seeing the challenges and excitement of the field firsthand. I discovered that I still love the process of historical research and finding ways to make history more accessible to the general public.

I chose to attend UMass because I am interested in both traditional academic history and public history, and this program provides excellent opportunities in both areas. During the first year of the program, my field work included a women's history audio walking tour of the UMass campus for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and an exhibit on Elizabeth Freeman, a formerly enslaved woman whose 1781 freedom suit effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts. In the summer of 2011, I interned at the Newport Historical Society, giving walking tours and curating an exhibit on samplers.

Sarah Marrs | M.A. Candidate

My interest in museums has roots in a childhood filled with family vacations to historic sites, national and state parks, and museums.

The summer before my junior year at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, I began working at the Titanic exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota. This experience solidified my decision to pursue a career in museums. Later that year I worked as an exhibit design intern for the Northfield Historical Society. I researched, wrote, fabricated, and installed an exhibit on the Carnegie Library in Northfield, MN. That summer I interned for the Washington County Historical Society, where I worked at the Warden’s House Museum, giving tours and developing a coloring book designed to teach fourth graders about local history. As a senior, I worked with the Northfield History Collaborative, a project that helped community partners to collect and digitize local history in a single online database.

I came to UMass because I am interested in continuing to study history and public history, and this program offered me the opportunity to do both.  I plan to study nineteenth century America and issues of gender in American history.

Laura Miller | Ph.D. Candidate
I graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2005 with a B.A. in History. From my first work experience as a tour guide at Ash Lawn-Highland in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have continually sought to bolster my education in history with work experience in the realm of public history. In the summer of 2005 I worked as an intern at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University and then spent a year as an Acquisitions Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania Press. While working at Penn Press I studied oral history and conducted my own oral history project, an experience that introduced me to the challenges and rewards of such nontraditional methods of historical inquiry. My focus in the Public History Program is on oral history and memory, and my research interests include 20th century U.S. history and urban history in both the United States and Europe. This program has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to further explore these interests while also developing the practical skills necessary to pursue a career as a public historian.

John Morton | M.A. Candidate
I came to UMass to study early American history, and found that the study of Public History and the study of early American history worked very well together. I had already done some museum work before I got here, at the Astors' Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and I found myself eager to do more. I also have an ongoing fascination with popular history, and the ways that the general public learns about history through theater, television, and the movies. Since beginning my studies here at UMass, I've been involved in several different projects. Last spring I collaborated with two colleagues to write a permanent exhibit for the Trustees of Reservations. This exhibit, which opened in August 2011 at the Ashley House in Sheffield, is on Elizabeth Freemen and the history of slavery in Massachusetts. In summer 2011I led a program at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington, Massachusetts, in which local teenagers studied historic interpretation and then wrote a new landscape tour for the site.

Emily Oswald | M.A. Candidate
I have pursued my interest in museums, history, and the history of museums through a research fellowship at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. More recently, I worked as a grant writer for the educational non-profit Facing History and Ourselves. My research interests include slavery in the United States before the Civil War and European colonialism in Africa, as well as the way contemporary Americans address, or choose not to address, the history of slavery. Museums and their histories continue to pique my curiosity.

During the first year of the program, I and two colleagues produced the exhibit "Becoming a Son of Great Barrington: W.E.B. Du Bois." The exhibit is currently on display in the lobby of the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington. In summer 2011, I interned with Richard Rabinowitz at the American History Workshop, and was awarded an ETHIR Fellowship from the UMass Amherst Special Collections and University Archives. I also created the exhibit "Come to Our Table: Twenty-Five Years of Research and Community Engagement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst" which was on display at the September 2011 conference celebrating the Public History Program's twenty-fifth anniversary.

Sandra Perot  | Ph.D. Candidate
I came to UMASS for a Master's Degree in History because of the Public History program.  The focus at UMASS on the importance of landscape and community allows public history students to visualize history, and more importantly, how to help the public visualize history as well.  With an MA in English Literature and an MA in teaching from San Jose State University, and an AB in English from Princeton University, I spent several years teaching high school English and American Literature, though I've always incorporated a cultural approach to teaching literature.  After becoming involved as a guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum here in Amherst, I wanted to find out more about what makes museums work and how to make museums successful.  Public History, for me, is the perfect blend of history, culture, and literature.  My focus at UMASS will be on Early America, Early Modern Europe (transatlantic influences on colonies,) and Public History.  Having spent a year in New Zealand and Australia and a year in Holland, I always yearn for new adventures and am looking to do an international internship for my Public History certificate.  Along with traveling, I also enjoy learning Dutch, focusing on my photography, knitting and playing with my kids.