Cheryl Harned

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My research focuses on material culture and the practice of collecting, especially in regards to the relationship between objects, memory, emotions, and display at the birth of the modern museum movement. In particular, my work examines the role of trauma, wonder, women, and activism in the creation of Mount Holyoke College's Joseph Allen Skinner Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I am also interested in pedagogy—in both analog and digital forms—and how to cultivate space for creativity in higher education.

When not dissertating, I can often be found working on various public history projects and exhibitions in Western Mass, such as the 2009 online exhibition I curated for the American Antiquarian Society (A Place of Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America) which was adapted in 2013 and put on display in Books Arts Gallery outside the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College. In 2014, I was selected to serve as the Graduate Fellow for a Five Colleges Inc./Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Public and Applied Humanities Bridging program, where I created the Applied Humanities Learning Lab and The Public Humanitarium, with and in the company of others. More recently, I continue to engage in public history projects and curated the digital Class of 1967 Campus Memorial & Monuments Tour for the UMass Alumni Association’s Class of 1967 gift to the university.