Active Collections: A Brown Bag Talk with Rainey Tisdale
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Nov 12
A Study of Direct Author Subvention for Publishing Humanities Books at Two Universities: From Researching and Reporting to Discussing and Implementing
In a long Summer 2015 Roundup I touched quickly on a lot of different recent projects, one of which was work “on a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded research/planning project considering the viability of alternative, sustainable financial models for university press monograph publishing in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.” While there are related projects underway elsewhere (I note here the two most kindred ones, that at Emory University and that undertaken by Ithaka), our effort was undertaken at the University of Michigan and at my home, Indiana University.
Title Page: A Study of Direct Author Subvention for Publishing Humanities Books at Two Universities: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by Indiana University and University of Michigan
The project we were working on will, I am hopeful, continue on into new phases, but it is exciting to have reached a key junction in the road with it. For those interested in the future of book (or long form) publishing in the humanities and social sciences, here are some ways to find out what our efforts were about.
Our report can be found on the University of Michigan’s institutional repository (Deep Blue) or here, in IUScholarWorks. It is titled A Study of Direct Author Subvention for Publishing Humanities Books at Two Universities: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by Indiana University and University of Michigan. Here is the abstract:
This white paper presents recommendations about how a system of monographic publication fully funded by subventions from authors’ parent institutions might function, based on research activities supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at Indiana University and the University of Michigan. While the contributors present a strong argument for implementing such an “author subvention” system, they describe a number of challenges and potential unintended consequences. Particular issues discussed include how to determine which publishers would be eligible for support, how best to support untenured faculty, and how to avoid disenfranchising scholars at less well-funded institutions.
The report was released on the eve of presentations made to the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Fall Forum 2015, the theme of which was Research Partnerships in Digital Scholarship for the Humanities and Social Sciences. At the Forum, members of the UM/IU and the Emory teams presented our findings/recommendations. For present, the full program is still available online. Here is a description of our panel, which was well-received and interestingly discussed.
The dramatically shifting landscape of scholarly communication and the increasing financial pressure on academic publishing in the humanities have prompted two Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded studies to explore the viability of a subvention funding system at three major research universities. Indiana University and the University of Michigan—both with university presses—and Emory University evaluated the implications of an emerging model for humanities publishing in which funds are given by universities and colleges directly to faculty authors to “shop” their academic books among participating non-profit publishers. In this presentation, panelists will discuss what is at stake, the research conducted at each institution, and the recommendations drawn from each study.
The whole Forum was outstanding, with great presentations from all involved. A different sense of the event can be gained by looking at the Storify (tweets) gathered here.
Our work was also recently shared at a meeting of the Chief Academic Officers (Provosts, etc.) at the American Association of Universities (AAU). Reception to these presentations suggests that there is hope for further forward movement in our efforts.
The first major engagement with the report that I have seen online is a essay written for The Scholarly Kitchen by Karin Wulf, a historian very involved in scholarly publishing through her work as Director or the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary. You can find her essay, which devotes significant attention to our report, here.
It has been a privilege to have been a part of the effort described in our report. I am thankful to my colleagues on the project—from whom I learned a tremendous amount. I am also very appreciative of the faculty and administrators at UM and IU who spent time talking with us, sharing their insights on the present and future of humanities and social science publishing. I also feel much appreciation to the Mellon Foundation for its crucial support of both the humanities and the scholarly publishing field.
Call for Applications: Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology
Here is a call for applications for next year’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, which will be held again at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. I post it here on behalf of SIMA Director Candance Greene. This is a wonderful program that has made a big difference for the training of graduate students for collections research. Note that the program now includes Faculty Fellows as well as graduate student participants.
Dear Colleagues,
We are now recruiting prospective graduate student participants, as well as Faculty Fellows, for the 2016 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA). We hope you will forward this announcement to interested students and colleagues and re-post to relevant lists. SIMA is a graduate student summer training program in museum research methods offered through the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History with major funding from the Cultural Anthropology Program of the National Science Foundation. Summer 2016 dates are June 27-July 22. Student applications are not due until March 1, 2016, but now is the time for students to investigate the program and begin to formulate a research project to propose. Decisions on Faculty Fellows will be made in December.
During four weeks of intensive training in seminars and hands-on workshops in the research collections, students are introduced to the scope of collections and their potential as data. Students become acquainted with strategies for navigating museum systems, learn to select methods to examine and analyze museum specimens, and consider a range of theoretical issues that collections-based research may address. In consultation with faculty, each student carries out preliminary data collection on a topic of their own choice and develops a prospectus for research to be implemented upon return to their home university. Instruction will be provided by Dr. Joshua A. Bell, Dr. Candace Greene and other Smithsonian scholars, plus a series of visiting faculty.
Who should apply?: Graduate students preparing for research careers in cultural anthropology who are interested in using museum collections as a data source. The program is not designed to serve students seeking careers in museum management. Students at both the masters and doctoral level will be considered for acceptance. Students in related interdisciplinary programs (Indigenous Studies, Folklore, etc.) are welcome to apply if the proposed project is anthropological in nature. All U.S. students are eligible for acceptance, even if studying abroad. International students can be considered only if they are enrolled in a university in the U.S. Members of Canadian First Nations are eligible under treaty agreements.
Costs: The program covers students’ tuition and shared housing in local furnished apartments. A stipend will be provided to assist with the cost of food and other local expenses. Participants are individually responsible for the cost of travel to and from Washington, DC.
SIMA dates for 2016: June 27 – July 22
Application deadline – March 1, 2016
NEW opportunity for faculty: We are now also offering fellowships for faculty to develop courses in museum anthropology. Interested faculty members should see the information included on the SIMA website.
I will be at the AAA meetings in Denver from November 18-22 and would be glad to discuss and answer any questions about the program. Email me at greenec@si.edu if you would like to schedule time to meet.
Want to discuss a project proposal? We’d love to hear from you. Email SIMA@si.edu
For more information and to apply, please visit http://anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute/
Regards,
Candace Greene
Working Wood: Oak-Rod Baskets in Indiana [Exhibition, Presentation @ MMWC]
The final exhibition of the three basketry exhibitions that the Mathers Museum of World Cultures (MMWC) is presenting as part of Themester opened this week. Like the first of the three to open (Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker), this one was also curated by MMWC Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage Jon Kay as an outgrowth of his research on Indiana folklife pursued as the Director of Traditional Arts Indiana. Later in this post, I will share information on a great upcoming event connected with the exhibition, but first a description:
Working Wood: Oak-Rod Baskets in Indiana presents the work of the Hovis and Bohall families of Brown County, Indiana, who made distinctive white-oak baskets for their neighbors to carry everyday items and to gather corn. However, by the 1930s, the interest of urban tourists transformed these sturdy workbaskets into desirable souvenirs and art objects. In recent years, these baskets have come to be called “Brown County” and “Bohall” baskets, perhaps because of the great number of baskets made by the Bohall family in Brown county during the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, the history of this craft is more complex these names reveal. Using artifacts and historic photographs, this exhibit explores the shifts in the uses and meanings of these baskets as they changed from obsolete, agricultural implements, into a tourist commodity. Using the lens of work, this exhibition tells the story of these oak-rod baskets and the people who made and used them, and how local makers strived to find a new audience for their old craft, and how ultimately the lure of steady work in the city contributed to the end of this tradition. Sponsored by Fall 2015 Themester @Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet, the exhibit will be on display at the museum through February 7, 2016.
It is great to now see all three basketry exhibitions open and staged in adjacent galleries. (Putting Baskets to Work in Southwestern China is the other one–I curated it with Lijun Zhang, Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities). Together they are one outgrowth of a broader focus at present on basketry research at MMWC. I’ll discuss some other aspects of this work in later posts. (Our Themester series echos the College’s theme. Our work is together grouped as @Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet).
A chance to learn more about the work of the basketmakers explored in Working Wood: Oak-Rod Baskets in Indiana is upcoming this Friday at the MMWC. Jon will present a talk titled “The Last Basketmaker: Indiana’s Oak-Rod Baskets and Their Makers” (Friday, September 11; 4 to 5 p.m.). Here is our description of the event:
The Bohall and Hovis families of Brown County made oak-rod baskets for their neighbors to gather produce and carry everyday items. While these workbaskets were essential for subsistence farming, industrialization and changes in agricultural practices threatened the continuation of this craft. and by the 1980s, the weaving of oak-rod baskets had ended in Indiana. In a lecture filled with historic photographs, Jon Kay, Director of Traditional Arts Indiana and Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the MMWC, unravels the story of these baskets and explores the global forces that brought this distinctive Indiana tradition to an end. The lecture, sponsored by Fall 2015 Themester @Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet, is free and open to the public.
Friday afternoon will be a great time to see the exhibitions and then hear and see Jon’s talk. I hope that you can make it.
The front of the At Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet postcard.
Putting Baskets to Work in Southwestern China || 百工之篮 | 中国西南篮子展
I am very enthusiastic about the fact that the second of the Mathers Museum of World Culture‘s three Themester 2015 exhibitions about basketry opens tomorrow (September 1, 2015). It is titled Putting Baskets to Work in Southwestern China (百工之篮 | 中国西南篮子展) and I co-curated it with Dr. Lijun Zhang of the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities. As always, the MMWC staff has worked hard to bring the script and objects and images to life and to get the word out. Support for the exhibition project has come from Themester, a project of the IU College of Arts and Sciences. The exhibition, like its two companions, relates to the 2015 theme @Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet. In the case of the MMWC exhibitions, grouped together as @Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet, we are looking at the changing story of baskets made and used for work and the story of the changing work of making baskets.
The baskets featured in the exhibition were collected for the museum by me during trips made to Southwestern China as a participant in the American Folklore Society‘s China-US Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage Project, specifically its current phase focused on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Ethnographic Museum Practice. (For funders of the ICH project, see here).
I hope that many visitors will get a chance to stop by the museum and see the exhibition. It has been a lot of fun to learn about the rich basket culture of Southwestern China and to find ways to share a bit of it with museum guests, including the students participating in Themester programming.
Vernacular Culture in Hands and Minds (The New Basketry Video)
The best places to preserve worthwhile vernacular cultural knowledge is in the hands and minds of talented and engaged people who carry it forward, making it their own and handing it on to still more people. Viki Graber of Goshen, Indiana comes from a long line of willow basketmakers. She has not only preserved the traditions of her family, she has built upon them in ways that curator Jon Kay has explored in the MMWC exhibition Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker. With Viki, Jon made a short documentary film showing steps that Viki uses in the production of a bail-handled work basket. Check it out on YouTube.
This basket is of the basic workbasket type that Viki learned from her father. If you visit the exhibition, you will see the great diversity of complex forms that Viki now creates.
Hopefully the film will inspire you to see the exhibition (through December 20, 2015) at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, to learn more about Viki’s basketwork, and to carry on or document the cultural practices of your family, community, or heritage. If you share a passion for vernacular culture—follow the Mathers Museum of World Cultures and Traditional Arts Indiana on social media or sign up for the museum’s email list.
Don’t Miss Viki Graber’s Artist in Residence Visit to the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Exhibition Opening
It will be a great semester at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. The first of our three At Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet exhibitions has already opened. Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker opened on August 18, but it is just getting started. This coming week will feature Viki Graber visiting the museum and demonstrating her work as Artist in Residence. Come meet her and see her work 11 am-2 pm on Wednesday (26th), Thursday (27th) or Friday (28th). On Wednesday the 26th at 4:30, we’ll formally open the exhibition with a reception. Everyone is welcome!!!!!
See the whole fall lineup below. The front and back of our postcard here are jpg files. If you have difficulty reading them, full details are on the museum website. Learn more about Viki Graber’s work on her website and Facebook page.
Putting Baskets to Work in Southwest China will open September 1st. Working Wood: Oak Rod Baskets in Indiana will open on September 8. (The photograph on the postcard, showing Bruce Hovis making an oak rod basket, relates to this final exhibition of the three part series.)
The exhibitions and associated programs have been supported by the 2015 Themester program of the College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University. (The Themester theme for this year is @Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet.)
The front of the At Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet postcard.
The back of the At Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet postcard.
Summer 2015 Roundup
Sherds and Patches has been neglected. My summers are always busy, but this year has been really busy. As the fall semester is about to begin, I feel like I should at least take stock of where I have been. A surprising number of folks visit this site and seemingly find something that they are looking for. In hopes of leading online visitors to some of the exhibitions, projects, etc. that I have been involved in this summer, I offer this roundup with relevant links. Packing a summer into one post, please excuse the length (about 1600 words). Skimmers welcome.
When the spring semester ended, my Mathers Museum of World Cultures colleagues and I, together with MMWC Policy Committee Chair Eric Sandweiss, poured our energies into hosting Museums at the Crossroads: Local Encounters, Global Knowledge. Held at the museum between May 14 and 21, the workshop was supported by the IU School of Global and International Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences. It gathered museum professionals and other scholars from numerous institutions and various countries for generative discussions and activities aimed at considering the state of museums in changing social contexts around the world. I am thankful for all who journeyed to Bloomington to join the discussion. Thanks too go to the MMWC staff members who helped organize the gathering and to the School and College for their generous support. Learn a bit more about Museums at the Crossroads from this IU press release. SGIS published a wrap-up story about Crossroads.
Before and after Museums at the Crossroads, I worked as a lead investigator on a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded research/planning project considering the viability of alternative, sustainable financial models for university press monograph publishing in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. This is a project being pursued concurrently on the University of Michigan and Indiana University campuses. I am the researcher for the IU component of the project. A glimpse of the project is available in this IU press release (where our project is the second of two being discussed). A story last summer in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides additional context for the models that I have been discussing with IU faculty and administrators as well as with our UM/IU, research team.
Another big project that came to fruition in the days after Museums at the Crossroads is the Mathers Museum of World Cultures exhibition Cherokee Craft, 1973. This is an exhibition that I have looked forward to doing since the early 1990s. As I student, I first studied the museum’s collections made among the Eastern Cherokee. I knew then that they would make a great exhibition. That moment came this summer. Originally, I was going to curate the exhibition with help from graduate students Emily Buhrow Rogers and Kelley Totten but by the time we finished, it was Kelly and I helping Emily with her exhibition. What Kelly and Emily came up with is infinitely better than the simple exhibition that I had originally imagined. Cherokee Craft, 1973 opened June 16. Here is how we have described the exhibition in promotional materials.
Cherokee Craft, 1973 offers a snapshot of craft production among the Eastern Band Cherokee at a key moment in both an ongoing Appalachian craft revival and the specific cultural and economic life of the Cherokee people in western North Carolina. The exhibition showcases woodcarvings, masks, ceramics, finger woven textiles, basketry, and dolls. The works presented are all rooted in Cherokee cultural tradition but all also bear the imprint of the specific individuals who crafted them and the particular circumstances in which these craftspeople made and circulated their handwork.
What that description does not explain is that the presentation for the exhibition creatively evokes the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc. gallery (ca. 1973), from which the museum obtained its collection. Come by and see the exhibition at MMWC and find the real co-op as it is today on its website.
After a quick but wonderful visit to Oklahoma for Green Corn, I headed off to the Smithsonian Institution to again serve as a visiting faculty member at the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, which is led by Candace Greene and funded by the National Science Foundation. I have discussed SIMA previously. It is a great program and this was a another great year. If you are new to SIMA, check out the SIMA information page. On top of the great SIMA stuff, I even had a bit of time to see the Chinese basketry in the NMNH collections!
A basket cataloged as Chinese in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. ET08510
SIMA was followed by a quick family trip to Santa Fe, where I got to attend the International Folk Art Market (which was great as always) and see the exhibition “The Red that Colored the World” at the Museum of International Folk Art. The “Red” exhibition is a tour de force. Simply amazing. I hope that many many more people get to see it in Santa Fe or on the tour to come. You can read about the Red exhibition in many places, including this NEH story by Peter BG Shoemaker in Humanities magazine.
While in Santa Fe, I purchased (at the market) two willow baskets by Blaise Cayol, a remarkable French basket maker. Learn about his basketry on his website Celui qui Tresse.
I collected Blaise Cayol’s baskets for a lot of reasons, including wanting them to help expand on the story that the Mathers Museum of World Cultures is telling in the exhibition Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker, which opens tomorrow. It is a great exhibition focused on the work of a great basket maker. Quoting from our exhibition announcement:
Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker presents a weaver of willow baskets from the Mennonite community of Goshen, Indiana, where she has lived for 25 years. Graber learned willow basket weaving at the age of twelve from her father, who was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as a 2009 National Heritage Fellow. Where once her family plied their talents to make utilitarian workbaskets, today she works full-time weaving baskets for collectors and to sell at art shows and galleries. While using the same tools and methods as her great-grandfather, Graber’s keen sense of color and innovative designs have elevated her family’s craft to a new aesthetic level.
Jon Kay curated Willow Work, drawing upon work done for Traditional Arts Indiana. Get details on the exhibition on the MMWC website. Learn more about Viki’s basketry on her website, Confluence of Willows.
Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker is one of three exhibitions that we (MMWC) are organizing for Themester. I will post (I hope) about the two that are still to come, but I note here that a second one has been curated by Jon Kay. Here is the description. Working Wood opens on September 8.
Working Wood: Oak-Rod Baskets in Indiana presents the work of the Hovis and Bohall families of Brown County, Indiana, who made distinctive white-oak baskets for their neighbors to carry everyday items and to gather corn. However, by the 1930s, the interest of urban tourists transformed these sturdy workbaskets into desirable souvenirs and art objects. In recent years, these baskets have come to be called “Brown County” and “Bohall” baskets, perhaps because of the great number of baskets made by the Bohall family in Brown county during the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, the history of this craft is more complex these names reveal. Using artifacts and historic photographs, this exhibit explores the shifts in the uses and meanings of these baskets as they changed from obsolete, agricultural implements, into a tourist commodity. Using the lens of work, this exhibition tells the story of these oak-rod baskets and the people who made and used them, and how local makers strived to find a new audience for their old craft, and how ultimately the lure of steady work in the city contributed to the end of this tradition.
Between now and then, we will be working to finalize an third basketry exhibition that I have co-curated with Lijun Zhang of the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities. Opening September 1, It focuses on work baskets in Southwestern China. We describe it in this way.
Putting Baskets to Work in Southwestern China explores the contemporary the use of basketry in urban and rural labor in contemporary China drawing upon a newly acquired representative collection of bamboo baskets documented as active tools of labor in the region around Dali, in Yunnan province, and in Guizhou and Guangxi provinces. The collection was acquired and documented by Jason Baird Jackson, Director of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, who will co-curate the exhibit with Lijun Zhang, Research Curator at the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities in Guangxi, China.
All three of these work-related basketry exhibitions have been organized for the Fall 2015 Themester, which is themed “@Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet.” Our museum programs are organized under the rubric “@Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet.” The College of Arts and Sciences at IU has contributed to these projects and the public programs that will accompany them. Learn more about Themester 2015 on the Themester website. Learn more about the exhibitions and programs on the MMWC website.
In the background, Emily Buhrow Rogers and I have been finalizing a double issue of Museum Anthropology Review. We look forward to sharing it in the next couple of weeks. See some of its content online in preview mode at the journal website.
In the midst of all of this, I have—with the support of numerous friends and colleagues—been preparing my faculty promotion case. Time will tell how that turns out.
This is just some of the high points. Its been a busy summer. Whether relaxing or busy, I hope that your summer was excellent.
Chief’s Coats, Brides, and Drumkeepers: The Development of Osage Bridal Attire
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Another community gathering for the Osage Weddings project is scheduled for this Sunday. This is a really exciting project with lots of opportunities for community involvement.
Mar 23
Salons to Explore New Frameworks for University Press Publishing in the Humanities
Beginning later this week, I will be hosting a series of six salons on the Indiana University campus. The topic for discussion is scholarly publishing in the arts and humanities–at Indiana University and in general. In particular, our focus will be book publishing and our goal will be to work through the implications of a number of proposals for changing how we fund, publish, and access scholarly books in these fields. The salons are part of research that I am doing with IU and University of Michigan partners with support from a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Here are some links to help make sense of these events and their larger contexts.
The Grant funding this work was one of two recently received by Mellon. The IU Bloomington Newsroom announced these here.
An invitation to the upcoming salons, with the dates and details, is available here.
A one page description of the study, along with links to more information on the topic is available here.
I hope that my colleagues from across the IU campus will join the conversation at one of these events. The first will be held this Wednesday, March 25 from 10 to 11:30 A.M. in Hazelbaker Hall, Scholars’ Commons, Wells Library.
Shreds and Patches 