History Majors and Museum Studies

The field of museum work is no longer the old mental picture of dusting off bones and mounting insects in some huge stuffy old building. Careers in the museum field are numerous and exciting. There also are thousands of sites and museums to work in. To learn more about museums in a certain state, list of different types of museums, find directories of museums, how to pursuer a career in museums, etc., use this link to the American Association of Museums (AAM) site. Museum education helpers are provided by Museum-Ed, and Public History helpers are here.

The places to get museum-related degrees are not prolific, but they certainly have increased in the past few decades. I have noticed the major fields and school departments directly tied to museum degrees are art history, science education, and history. For a list of graduate schools offering museum degrees, check out the GradSchools.com Eastern U.S. list, the NC Museums Council college survey, the Smithsonian list, or the international ICM/ICTOP list. Also, you can go the homepage of GradSchools.com, under Search Graduate Programs by Subject select Humanities. A long list of options will come up including museum-related fields like Historic Preservation, Museum Studies, and Public History. Using these resources, some of the programs and schools I have looked at are: the Leadership in Museum Education program of Bank Street College Graduate School of Education in New York, the M.A. in Museum Education or Museum Communication from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Kansas, the M.A. in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, and the UNCG Public History Program in Museum Studies.

Of course, many degrees can get you a job in a museum, depending on your area of interest. Marketing, finance, business administration, curator/collections management, art history, science, education, architecture/exhibit design, graphic design, archeology, anthropology, history, etc. are all degree areas that can be used in a museum. The University of Michigan: Museum of Art has a page to help their museum program students find a career. The following is a list of sites to help people locate jobs in museums or just locate a museum: Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) job list, MuseumsUSA museum directory, Canadian Museums Association, Western Museums Association, Museum Education Roundtable list of professional associations, National Association for Museum Exhibition job listing, and the AAM job list.

For those interested in a history degree (not museum studies / public history), here are a few sites to help with that. Wake Forest University has a page on internships, graduate schools, professional schools, careers for historians, etc. Also, the American Historical Association (AHA) offers help in finding a history career as well. Humboldt Sate University History Department is also a good resource for history majors. To find a school that offers the history PhD specialization you want, use the AHA History Doctoral Programs in U.S. and Canada page as a good start. Another possible help is a history program ranking site to help you locate a history program that fits your needs best.

Reference Guides for History

Any serious history student will discover eventually that several reference materials on writing are repeatedly mentioned as needed for a class. I noticed that MLA was used quite frequently in classes, especially at lower levels, for not only History but also English, Art History, Anthropology, Sociology, etc. Psychology, plus some oddball teachers, used a mix of APA/MLA enough to confuse me thoroughly, so I bought a MLA guide thinking that it would solve all my problems and last me for the rest of my days in school. Boy was I wrong.

I hit senior year history classes and several books were mentioned as “absolutely-critical-to-my-success-in-anything-past-this-point” especially if I was considering graduate school. So, I did some research and discovered that the best way for a poor college student like myself to get the books I needed was through Amazon.com. I know there’s Half.com and BarnesandNoble.com, but getting used books on Amazon (that, I might add, were in excellent condition) was great. Easy searching, nice pictures of the books, good publication info, easy layout including an easy way to view new vs. used book price plus the shipping costs made Amazon.com by new favorite book store. Everything came well-packaged, and 2 out of the 3 sellers I bought from sent multiple emails letting me know they had my order, had sent it, and if I had any questions to let them know.

Here are the books that I came up with as much needed, after I did some UNCG History Department Syllabi research to see what was required or suggested the most.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2003.

Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.

Strunk, William, Jr. and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon/Longman Publishers, 2000.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manuel for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 6th ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.

The Chicago Manual of Style (now in the 15th edition, and from which Turabian gets its info) would be a good purchase as well, but an expensive one.

I found a little under 20 more writing guides—some covering material similar to the previously mentioned ones and others looking more into the scholarly study of writing—after using the search words “history research writing” then clicking on “books”, then “reference”, then “writing”, then “writing skills”, to narrow the field down. They looked fairly useful, and I may eventually purchase them, but if you know about or own any other guides, let me know what you think of them.

Native Americans

I am by no means an expert on Native Americans, but I have had some experience. To begin with, in North Carolina alone there are several Indian tribes still around, but many were destroyed by disease, war, and displacement or amalgamated through marriage. The Cherokee are the most famous of the NC Native American tribes. There are actually two branches of this group—the Eastern Cherokee in the NC mountains and the Western branch in Oklahoma. This happened because even when a majority of Cherokee were moved West, on the now famous Trail of Tears, some were never rounded up because they resisted or hid too well. Other present day tribes in NC include the Lumbee, Coharie, Waccamaw Siouan, Haliwa-Saponi, Meherrin, and the Indians of Person County. Many counties in NC have Indian names such as Alleghany, Alamance, Catawba (named after a tribe), Cherokee (named after a tribe), Chowan (named after a tribe), Currituck, Pasquotank (named after a tribe), and Perquimans (named after a tribe). Past tribes include the Chowanoke, Croatoan, Hatteras, Moratoc, Secotan, Weapemeoc, Machapunga, Pamlico, Coree, Neuse River, Tuscarora, Meherrin, Cherokee, Cape Fear, Catawba, Shakori, Sissipahaw, Sugeree, Waccamaw, Waxhaw, Woccon, Cheraw, Eno, Keyauwee, Occaneechi, Saponi, and Tutelo Indians. (see NC Museum of History site for more info http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/AI/TimeLine.htm)

North Carolina is a part of the sub-region called Southeastern Woodlands which is apart of the Eastern Woodlands. This region is famous for the Temple Mound Builders, Marksville, and the Mississippian Culture. The Mississippian Culture is noted for having the largest prehistoric city north of Mexico, called Cahokia with its famous Monk’s Mound (located in present day Illinois). Monk’s Mound was approximately 100 ft high and contains 600,000 cubic meters of dirt, and it covered an area 3 acres larger than the pyramid at Giza, making it one of the largest examples of prehistoric construction in the Western Hemisphere. NC is not known for any “major” sites, but the Town Creek Indian Mounds were supposedly during this period of Mississippian Culture (see NC Museum of History site for a list of Native American related sites http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/AI/Museums.htm)

I may post more info after our presentation, but for now, to learn more about life in the Americas before Columbus arrived and how things changed when he did come (worthy of a long posting in itself), check out Charles C. Mann’s book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Here is a link to his book http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781400040063&itm=3

For more maps and info on the web, check out the following links.

Maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Americanindiansmapcensusbureau.gif (2000 census map of concentrations of Native Americans in the U.S.)
http://www.aaanativearts.com/Native_American_map.jpg (map of some major tribes’ locations)
http://nativeamericanrhymes.com/regions.htm (map of regions)
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncqualla/native.htm (NC county map of Native American tribes)
http://rla.unc.edu/lessons/Front/L006.htm (map of the location of current NC Native Americans)
http://www.mrsbogucki.com/aemes/resource/woodland/index.htm (map and quick overview of Eastern Woodlands)

Native American Cultural Areas
http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/naa/naa_web/mod13A.html (Poverty Point)
http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/naa/naa_web/mod03.html
(a breakdown of Native American cultural areas)
http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/naa/naa_web/mod13D.html (Mississippian culture)

Other Sites
http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/AI/home.htm (check out the Handouts tab for helpers)
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/northcarolina/ (an excellent list of NC Indian tribes, past and present, and their info)
http://ssw.unc.edu/fcrp/cspn/vol11_no2/aiinnc.htm (some info on NC Native Americans, including a short list of NC state-recognized tribes, but mostly this is census info)
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/nchh/amerindian.html#17th (timeline of Indians in NC)
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/NC/HISTORY/HISTORY.HTM (some info on Indians in first 5 sections of page)

History People

I like the way one of my history professors described people who like history to our class. She said "History people aren't people who just memorize facts. History people are the people who know how to look things up." This is very true, which is probably why I like her quote so much.