The Corporation approved a new Master's Degree in Public Humanities in the Department of American Civilization on Saturday. The program, providing training for careers in museums and other historical preservation organizations, will be offered beginning Fall 2005.
Steven Lubar, professor of American civilization and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, will oversee the new program.
The Master's in Public Humanities expands and replaces the existing Master's in Museum Studies, adding topics that go beyond the scope of museum studies. The program will include study of historic preservation, digitization, public memorials and journalism on art, history and culture.
The new program will require four semesters and two practicums for completion.
The practicums will be crucial to the new curriculum, Lubar said. Under each practicum, students will intern at local museums and cultural organizations and complete individual projects. The projects will expose the students to the real work of public humanities and will be supervised by professionals in the field.
Some of the possible institutions being considered for practicums are Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Smithsonian Institution.
According to Lubar, the idea for the Master's in Public Humanities had been discussed for a long time. "It's been talked about for five years or so. There was a sense that it would be good to expand the (museum studies) program to include bigger issues of how to present the humanities. We wanted to incorporate things like state humanities commissions, theater and dance, and historic presentation in the program," he said.
In the proposal approved by the faculty on Feb. 1 and the Corporation last weekend, the Department of American Civilization notes "no other university, to our knowledge, offers an M.A. in public humanities," although around 20 universities grant degrees in museum studies.
Lubar said new courses would be introduced for the program, but there were no plans to bring in new faculty. "There will be several new courses that aren't offered now, including an introductory course to public humanities and a course on methods and techniques of public humanities. But the program is very multi-disciplinary, and a lot of courses are taught in other departments, such as history and anthropology. We hope to have some visiting professors, and a lot of talks by guest speakers," he said.
The program also seeks to take advantage of Brown's relationship with RISD to offer opportunities for collaboration between the two institutions. Planners hope to work with RISD's Urban Design Institute and Landscape Architecture program.
"One of the strengths of the program is that it includes all these related fields, and we hope to bring RISD into the mix. We could have RISD students working in this area together with our students from Brown," Lubar said. He cited a current exhibition created by students in AC 190, Sec. 3: "Theory and Methods of Oral History," currently on display at Carriage House, as an example of the type of collaboration that could be done with RISD. Brown and RISD students worked together to create the exhibit about artists and institution builders in the Providence arts community.
Lubar said in addition to broadening the scope of the Master's in Museum Studies program, the Master's in Public Humanities will also have the resources to attract more students. "Right now we've usually had two or three students each year, but we hope to have 10 students each year in the new program. We're in the process of accepting admissions for next year, and we'd love to have Brown students apply for admission this fall," he said.
One student noted that the program has begun to receive some publicity among American civilization concentrators. "It's just started to get a buzz, and people have started to talk about the new program in the past couple of weeks. It's definitely worth consideration. I'm not aware of any other similar graduate programs in the U.S., and it could be very interesting," said Heather Velez '05.
