Museums at the seams: How two North Carolina museums are supporting racial literacy, critical education, and civic activism
| dc.contributor.author | Russian, Anya | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Chavis, Charles (George Mason University) | en_US |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Anyaduba, Chigbo Arthur (Peace and Conflict Studies) | en_US |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Senehi, Jessica | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-04-13T20:08:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-04-13T20:08:15Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2023-04-03 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-03-25 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2023-03-25T23:30:30Z | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | 2023-04-03T14:40:32Z | en_US |
| dc.degree.discipline | Peace and Conflict Studies | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts (M.A.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Since the 2020 BLM movement, public forums for critical dialogue about racial justice in the United States have multiplied in number and visibility. They have also provoked intense backlash including a wave of unprecedented state laws attempting to restrict the teaching about race and other critical topics in schools. Many American museums have responded by disseminating public history education and engaging their local communities in sustained conversations about critical topics being censored elsewhere. Simultaneously, they are using digital technologies to engage an increasingly virtual public in the wake of the Covid-19 public health crisis. Using participant observation, digital ethnography, and critical discourse analysis, I examine two such museums in North Carolina. I ask how these institutions are tapping local knowledge to make national conversations around race, identity, and social justice more legible to their immediate communities. Drawing on scholarship from critical geography and pedagogy, conflict transformation, and culture, I document the approaches these museums are using to convene intersectional citizen engagement, to frame citizen priorities, and to articulate citizen-agency in their local contexts. I explain how these institutions are reimagining the social purpose of the museum, rethinking critical education, and promoting peace-action networks. This thesis reflects on how official cultural institutions may contribute to positive peacebuilding in racially divided societies and how they may facilitate social reform movements more broadly. I make a case for why museums and societies benefit from these institutions considering their work as part of larger peacebuilding projects. I offer urgent reasons and practical strategies for museums to initiate and further develop critical education initiatives, especially to reach audiences most removed from—and often in need of—counter-knowledge on and off the web. This research asks us to reconsider not only how museums connect with the public but how they can create spaces that purposefully respond to conflicts arising in contemporary multicultural societies. It demonstrates that museums can be important vehicles to convene grassroots, civil society, and top-tier civic resistance against racial and other forms of violence. | en_US |
| dc.description.note | May 2023 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/37280 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | conflict transformation | en_US |
| dc.subject | critical education | en_US |
| dc.subject | museums | en_US |
| dc.subject | digital activism | en_US |
| dc.subject | racism | en_US |
| dc.subject | social justice movements | en_US |
| dc.subject | local peacebuilding | en_US |
| dc.title | Museums at the seams: How two North Carolina museums are supporting racial literacy, critical education, and civic activism | en_US |
| dc.type | master thesis | en_US |
| local.subject.manitoba | no | en_US |
| oaire.awardNumber | 7858489 | en_US |
| oaire.awardTitle | Manitoba Graduate Scholarship (MGS) | en_US |
| project.funder.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13039/100010318 | en_US |
| project.funder.name | University of Manitoba | en_US |