Founding Force, Forgotten Focus: A Case Study of Gender Influence Within the Preservation of Historic House Museums, with Emphasis on the Jacobsburg Historical Society's Boulton Historic Site in Pennsylvania
Genre
Thesis/DissertationDate
2012Author
Brown, Lyndsey S.Advisor
Bruggeman, Seth C., 1975-Committee member
Arato, Christine A.Ryan, Francis J., 1947-
Department
HistorySubject
HistoryMuseum Studies
American History
Boulton Historic Site
Gender History
Historic House Museums
History
Preservation
Public History
Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/867Metadata
Show full item recordDOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/849Abstract
Historic house museums are the focus of an ideological tension between preservation and interpretation within the public history community. At a time where many house museums are failing, preservationists advocate for solutions to the house museum dilemma focused on saving the building. Historians and other museum professionals point to the importance of the value of the collections, memories, and documents preserved within the house as critical tools for understanding and teaching American history. Of specific focus in this thesis is the role gender influence played in the formation of historic house museums and how an examination of its continuing effect on agency within heritage sites creates access points for cutting-edge public history and interpretation. This is done through a case study of the history of the Jacobsburg Historical Society's Boulton Historic Site in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The site was the location of the Boulton Gun Works, built in 1812 by the Henry family, manufacturers of the Pennsylvania Longrifle and key members of the early industrial community of Jacobsburg, located just north of the Moravian community of Nazareth.ADA compliance
For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact scholarshare@temple.eduCollections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
“MOST HISTORIC HOUSES JUST SIT THERE”: ACTIVATING THE PRESENT AT HISTORIC HOUSE MUSEUMSHistoric house museums (HHMs) are contradictory spaces, private places made public. They (often) combine the real with the reproduction. Drawing from object reverence, taxonomy, and tableaux over a century and a half of practice, the American HHM arrives in the present as a Frankenstein's monster of nostalgia. Chamounix Mansion has been a youth hostel since 1964. It has also been a historic house museum, though when it became one and when—if—it ever stopped being one is an open question. Chamounix is a space where the past, present, and future all share space, as guests move through historic spaces, have conversations about anything or nothing at all, and plan their next day, their next destination, their next major life move. It is a place that seems fertile for meaning-making. It also provides a fascinating case study of what HHMs have been and what they might become. The Friends of Chamounix Mansion employed the methods of other HHMs as it tried to achieve recognition as an HHM in the 1960s, but by the 1980s, they began claiming the hostel’s usage as another form of authenticity. As HHMs face a variety of challenges today, and seek to make meaning with visitors and neighbors alike, the example of Chamounix Mansion offers a case study of how embracing usage might offer new directions for meaning-making.
-
Uncovering Queer Domesticity: Intuition and Possibility as Methods of Intervention Into the Historic House Museum and ArchiveThis thesis is an exploration of queer domesticity, queer possibility and intuitionin historic house museums. It develops a methodological framework intended to intervene in archival, research, interpretive and institutional practices at these sites. Using the Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s podcast The Alley Cast as a case study, I examine how utilizing a framework that understands queerness to be just as possible as straightness; that uses intuition to guide research; and queer and trans theory to denaturalize categories of sexuality and gender can uncover queer domestic patterns that unsettle and disrupt the public’s hetero- and cisnormative assumptions about the past. I argue that this is a framework that can be adopted by historic house museums in order to engage with queer history when evidence may be lacking or whose historical subjects’ gender or sexuality resists easy classification. Finally, I argue that implementing such a framework can only be done successfully if it is engaged as part of a larger institution-wide commitment to creating a socially just and responsive museum that understands the importance of sharing complicated and difficult history with its public and dismantling its own position of power and authority.
-
The Cemetery Project: A Model for Teaching Historical Understanding and Public History in an Age of Teaching to the TestThis study explores the history of the Cemetery Project, a research-based initiative facilitated by Julia Reynolds Masterman Preparatory and Demonstration School (Masterman) teachers since 1990 at The Woodlands, both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As understood here, the Cemetery Project has the potential to change the ways in which public history institutions like archives, libraries, and historical institutions engage with classrooms. Situated within the context and history of social science education reform and policy, the Cemetery Project shows the pertinence of primary sources use with the goal of teaching historical thinking in high school history educational contexts.
