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Jennifer Shannon CU Museum of Natural History University of Colorado, 218 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0218
Office: Henderson 218 Phone: 303-492-6276 Fax: 303-492-4195 Email: jshannon@colorado.edu
CU Museum, Anthropology Section
Faculty Affiliate,
Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Incoming Co-Editor, Journal of Museum Anthropology July 2012 |
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Jen Shannon |
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Curator & Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Interests: Anthropology of Museums; Indigenous Rights and Representation; Contemporary Indigeneity and Settler Colonialism; Anthropology of Media and Cultural Production; Anthropology of Tourism; Ethics and Collaborative Practice; Native North America and Caribbean.
I joined the CU Department of Anthropology and the CU Museum of Natural History in August of 2009. My interest in museums, as a museum professional and later as an ethnographer, began when I was hired as a curatorial research assistant and fieldworker for the inaugural exhibitions of the National Museum of the American Indian from 1999-2002.
I completed a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University in 2008. My research documented the process of “community curating” at the NMAI from the museum professional and indigenous communities’ perspectives. My interests further developed as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia’s department of Anthropology from 2008-09. This department is associated with the UBC Museum of Anthropology— a public museum well know for its collaborative methods (in exhibits, repatriation, and online partnerships), student engagement, and experimental forms of display.
I am interested in the history, theory, and contemporary practice of museums and the representation of indigenous peoples. My research has focused on the relationships between institutions and Native peoples involved in collaborative exhibit making as well as efforts of self-representation in Native communities. My work is a form of critical museology and anthropology of mediation that focuses on the theory, methods and ethics of the discipline of Anthropology more broadly—including its history, legacies and future with respect to indigenous peoples’ contemporary experiences, rights and representations.
Through my research and professional work I have had the opportunity to work with diverse indigenous peoples including Canadian Inuit, Australian Aboriginal, Chicago urban Indian, Navajo, Paiwan (Taiwan indigenous peoples), and Kalinago (or Carib Indians of Dominica in the West Indies) communities. |
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Selected Publications & Presentations
Forth. An Ethnography of “Our Lives”: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the making of the National Museum of the American Indian.
2010 “Connecting Museums and Source Communities: Using anthropological methods to promote indigenous voices.” Co-authored for the Society for Applied Anthropology meetings. Seattle, WA. April 1. [Co-authored with Kendall Tallmadge, CU Anthropology graduate student, advisee and research assistant.]
2010 “Museum Ethnography: Methods and Perspectives.” Presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings. New Orleans, LA. November 18.
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Teaching I have taught these courses:
* Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology (in prep)
* Introduction to Museum Studies The introductory course for incoming masters students in the Museum and Field Studies program at CU.
* Introduction to Museum Anthropology A cultural anthropology course about the history of relations among the discipline of anthropology, museums, and Native American peoples: The Objective, then, is not simply to criticize museums but also to attempt to locate them (and the critiques) within their social, political, and economic contexts. - Michael Ames in Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums (1992:5)
* Graduate Seminar, Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology * Anthropology of Media and Cultural Production * Introduction to Problems in Methods and Theory in Anthropology * Thinking Outside the (Glass) Box: Representations of Native Americans in the museum and beyond |
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Related Links
CU Museum of Natural History http://cumuseum.colorado.edu/
CUMNH, Anthropology Section http://cumuseum.colorado.edu/Research/Anthro/
CU Department of Anthropology http://www.colorado.edu/Anthropology/
CU Cultural Anthropology http://www.colorado.edu/Anthropology/graduate/cultural.html
School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe (SAR) http://sarweb.org/
American Anthropological Association http://aaanet.org/
Museum Anthropology Blog http://museumanthropology.blogspot.com/
American Association of Museums http://www.aam-us.org/
Association of College & University Museums & Galleries http://www.acumg.org/index.html
Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia http://www.moa.ubc.ca/
Isuma TV http://www.isuma.tv/ [Browse videos created by indigenous peoples; launched in January 2008 by Igloolik Isuma Productions]
Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond http://www.indigenouspolitics.com/ [Browse radio interviews conducted by J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of anthropology and American studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.]
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Museum Exhibitions I have contributed to the development of these exhibitions:
* iShare: Connecting Museums and Communities East and West (CUMNH, Boulder CO 2011)
* Shelley Niro: Borders (CUMNH, Boulder CO 2010) * Contemporary Pueblo Pottery (CUMNH, Boulder CO 2010) * Igloolik Exhibit, Our Lives Gallery (NMAI, Washington DC 2004)
* Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities (NMAI, Washington DC 2004) * Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories (NMAI, Washington DC 2004) * Terry Turner: Over 40 Years with the Kayapo (Cornell University, Ithaca NY 2004) |
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CU Projects… More info coming soon!
Digitizing the Anthropology Collection Building a digital archive of our ethnographic collection to better facilitate working with and providing access to Native American communities and professional and student researchers. Providing the technology and materials for students to build their skills in contemporary museum practice.
iShare: http://en.projectishare.com/ Connecting Museums and Communities East and West
National Taiwan Museum Navajo Nation Museum
CU Museum of Natural History Laiyi Indigenous Museum
We were awarded a $90,500 grant to work with the Navajo Nation Museum, the National Taiwan Museum, and the Laiyi Indigenous Museum of Taiwan to create an online collaborative web application and public website. The project is ongoing since Summer 2010. For more information about the iShare project and our quarterly reports to AAM, designed as newsletters for our partners, see http://en.projectishare.com/galleries/34
For more information about the MCCA grant, see http://www.aam-us.org/mcca/taiwan09-11.cfm.
Building Collaborative Partnerships Working with Native American communities to learn about, properly display, and better care for our collections. Encouraging reciprocal, long term relationships with source communities. Providing opportunities for students to learn collaborative practices.
Oral History Project and Documentary in collaboration with the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation and the Case family (Rev. Harold Case donated the MHA collection at the CU Museum of Natural History).
NAGPRA Consultation and Documentation Grants. Currently working on two separate grants with two tribes to document and consult on ethnographic collections. Grant-funded registrar is inventorying tribes’ materials in our collection and working with NAGPRA liaisons to provide more accurate information for the museum catalogue and to identify which items should be considered under the Native Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990). For more information about NAGPRA grants see http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/grants/INDEX.HTM. Developing a NAGPRA Workshop. Working with two anthropology graduate students and a law student to create a workshop for training anthropology graduate students about NAGPRA consultations; will include video, written how-to manual for conducting workshop, annotated NAGPRA law, and mock consultation materials. NAGPRA officers have contributed through allowing us to video record consultation meetings for educational purposes.
University Museums: Challenges and Opportunities Thinking critically and creatively about the unique institution of the university museum.
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2009 “The Professionalization of Indigeneity: Transnational ideas of indigeneity in the Carib Territory of Dominica.” Presented at the Canada Anthropology Society Conference. Vancouver, BC. May 13-16.
2009 “The Carib Liberation Movement: The Legacy of American Indian Activism in Dominica” in Visions and Voices: American Indian Activism in the Sixties. Edited by Terry Straus and Kurt Peters (Chicago: Albatross Press). [Coauthored with Garnette Joseph, former Chief of the Carib Territory, Dominica]
2007 “Informed Consent: Documenting the intersection of bureaucratic regulation and ethnographic practice.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 30(2): 229-248.
2007 “Artifacts of Collaboration: The Our Lives exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian.” Presented at the American Anthropological Association. Washington, DC. November 29. Session Chair: Christina Krepps, “Thinking Outside the Glass Box: The Legacy of Michael Ames.”
2007 “Exhibiting Indians: How the indigenous and the cosmopolitan come together at the National Museum of the American Indian.” Presented at the American Ethnological Society / Canadian Anthropological Society Joint Conference. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
2002 “Research in Igloolik, Nunavut.” Arctic Studies Center Newsletter. 10:14. Washington, DC: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
2002 “Mr. Okalik, the First Premier of Nunavut, Visits the Smithsonian.” Arctic Studies Center Newsletter. 10:22-24. Washington, DC: NMNH, Smithsonian Institution. [Coauthored with Stephen Loring, NMNH]
1999 “Venetie Goes to Court: Inherent Sovereignty and Indian Country in Alaska.” M.A., Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (Anthropology) at University of Chicago.
1999 “The History and Significance of the Indian Child Welfare Act in Alaska.” Presented at the Central States Anthropological Society Conference. Chicago, IL. |
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2009 “The construction of Native Voice at the National Museum of the American Indian” in Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives. Edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). |
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Unrelated Links
PhD Comics http://www.phdcomics.com/
Grass Roots Ultimate Frisbee Association http://www.gru.org/
Ultimate Players Association http://www.upa.org/
Hubble Telescope Photos of our Universe http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire
CU Fiske Planetarium Events http://fiske.colorado.edu/events/index.php |
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Job Resources for Students By no means a complete list, just a place to begin your search...
Museum Jobs Getting a Job in a Museum http://www.fsu.edu/~ms/pages/museumjob.html [Good advice from the Florida State University Museum Studies Program] Smithsonian List of Museum Employment Opportunities http://museumstudies.si.edu/employment.html ACUMG Job List http://www.acumg.org/job.html AAM Career Center http://www.jobtarget.com/c/search_results.cfm?site_id=8712 AAM Emerging Museum Professionals Resources http://www.aam-us.org/getinvolved/emp/index.cfm [Includes a link for Fellowships] Global Museum, Click on Museum Jobs http://www.globalmuseum.org/ Museum Jobs http://www.museumjobs.com/us/
Anthropology Jobs AAA Career Center http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ National Association for the Practice of Anthropology Job List http://practicinganthropology.org/category/jobs/
Both USA Jobs—Federal Job Opportunities http://www.usajobs.gov/ [Search for museum, anthropology, heritage management, etc.— includes Smithsonian museums and National Park Service]
If you have found additional useful links, please email them to me and I will post them here. Thank you! |
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Photo by Jason Ordaz 2011 |
