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04/22/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/22/2024 13:06

Anonymous $1M Gift Bolsters American & New England Studies Program

Anonymous $1M Gift Bolsters American & New England Studies Program

Marina Dawn Wells (GRS'20,'24) examining a scrimshaw carving of a trans pirate, "Alwilda," that a whaleman copied out of a book by Charles Ellms, The Pirates Own Book (1837). Photo by Drew Furtado/New Bedford Whaling Museum

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Anonymous $1M Gift Bolsters American & New England Studies Program

It will create a Public Humanities Fund to support PhD students with research projects, internships

April 22, 2024
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PhD students in the American & New England Studies Program (AMNESP) can dream a little bigger next year thanks to an anonymous $1 million gift, part of which will create a new Public Humanities Fund to support research projects, award grants, and fund research-related activities beyond campus.

"I'm exploring the possibility of partnering with local institutions to fund internships that focus on public-facing work in the humanities," says Joseph Rezek, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of English and AMNESP director.

"I'm also interested in receiving proposals from PhD students to fund projects of their own design-what's your dream project?" Rezek says.

Joseph Rezek. Photo by Michael D. Spencer

Income from the gift, expected to start flowing during the 2024-2025 school year, will also fund academic fellowships, outside speakers, conference travel, and the like. But Rezek and the faculty are most excited about the Public Humanities Fund and its potential to expand opportunities beyond the campus and help recruit top students.

Students in AMNESP can pursue traditional academic careers, but it's no secret that lately there are more newly minted PhDs than jobs. These days many head for the public humanities, through internships and research projects at institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, and others. Only about a third are on the New England track; among the others this year is a student whose project about the airspace in the American west is supported by a NASA fellowship.

AMNESP comprises a large PhD program, with around 30 active students at a time, writing dissertations that cover all periods of American history and culture, from the colonial period to the present, along with a small undergraduate program and a related master's program in preservation studies.

A small faculty steering committee helped Rezek shape the Public Humanities Fund plan.

I'm also interested in receiving proposals from PhD students to fund projects of their own design-what's your dream project?
Joseph Rezek

"I can tell you the spirit of the donation," Rezek says, "which is that this donor supports traditional academic success and also the idea that we need highly educated, credentialed specialists to guide the general public through a story of American history that is accurate, rich, and engages the humanities, art, history, and politics,

in all the complicated ways you would in a classroom. But [the donor]also supports the work that we've done historically in these other other kinds of institutions."

For a sample of what public-facing work in the humanities can mean for a PhD student, swing down to the New Bedford Whaling Museum beginning Friday and check out Reflections, an exhibition in the museum's San Francisco Gallery.

On display through October 27, the exhibition plumbs the museum's vast photography collection for images of literal or metaphorical reflection. The Reflections text quotes Herman Melville in Moby-Dick: "Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."

The exhibition was researched and curated by Marina Dawn Wells (GRS'20,'24), who uses they/them pronouns. Wells recently successfully defended their PhD in the AMNESP and is the photography collection curatorial fellow at the museum.

"I'm basically the steward of the photography collection, which is pretty incredible," says Wells. "The collection numbers somewhere around 200,000 objects. It's a vast collection that spans the history of photography, from when daguerreotypes were invented in 1839 up to the present.

"There are all different forms of photography within it, and I've been responsible for cataloging work and advocating for the photography collection at a departmental and interdepartmental level. I've curated a couple of really exciting projects and that feels like a big deal, actually."

In addition to Reflections, Wells is deep into research for a major exhibition that won't open until fall 2025, Strike a Pose, on portraiture and the more than 200 photography studios that thrived in New Bedford in the 19th century.

When Wells' fellowship ends with the summer, they'll be staying on at the Whaling Museum as assistant curator of history and culture.

"It's a wonderful place to be, especially for an American studies-oriented scholar, because it is art, history, science, and culture," they say. "The embeddedness of the interdisciplinary approach in this institution in particular is astounding."

Wells' dissertation, Making Men from Whales: Gender and American Whaling Art, 1814-1861, looks mainly at scrimshaw as well as painting, prints, and other forms to decode the ways artworks aboutf life at sea depicted and sometimes subverted traditional masculinity.

Between Wells' freshly minted PhD and the new job at the museum, it makes a nice demonstration of how the BU program's support of public humanities can be a game changer for students.

"It's hugely valuable," Wells says. "I've obviously benefited from the ways in which BU and the American & New England Studies Program have supported the importance of external experiences.

"A museum is just an ideal place for someone who's a graduate of my program," they say. "There's a scarcity of academic jobs right now, and it's so beneficial to think about what museums, what archives, what preservation societies, what national parks, what libraries that students can go into."

Wells is just the kind of student Rezek is hoping will take advantage of the new fund.

"This is not someone who will benefit from the Public Humanities Fund, because they are graduating, but they are an example of exactly the kind of thing that we're trying to do with it," he says.

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  • Joel Brown

    Staff Writer

    Joel Brown is a staff writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. He's written more than 700 stories for the Boston Globe and has also written for the Boston Herald and the Greenfield Recorder. Profile

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