Shannon McMullen
Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence Faculty Scholar
Report
Project Title: Viewing Narratives, Voicing Alternatives
Proposed Project Summary
In her book,
Svetlana Boym, argues that a monument is a form of
– a place in the world and a place in discourse. In her analysis,
are places where the material, visual and discursive intersect. The degree to which meaning and history can be questioned, reinterpreted and negotiated at such locations, rather than fixed and preserved is the key to the distinction Boym makes between
nostalgia and
nostalgia. The continuum between these two poles provides a tool with which to evaluate what kind of sites, structures and representations are more democratic by allowing for multiple interpretations and narratives from a number of different groups (
), as opposed to those sites which attempt to restrict the representation of memory to a single dominant narrative and identity (
).
With Boym’s framework in mind, the project I propose combines social inquiry and artistic forms to provoke critical public dialog around the gender narratives of campus visual and material culture. Boym’s notion of reflective nostalgia hinges on its distinction from restorative nostalgia and the corollary contrast between collective or cultural memory and national memory. However, these should not be understood as mutually exclusive categories—Boym understands reflective and restorative as two tendencies within a larger spectrum of nostalgia. The question is whether attention to different campus public cultures in their visual and material dimensions can reveal something about everyday practices and experiences of gender in university settings.
Pursuing this project is an opportunity to bring my interdisciplinary perspective to bear on these questions meaning that social research and artistic intervention are two desired outcomes.
Report
The Butler faculty scholar program enabled me to conduct exploratory research on this project. Over the course of the semester, I engaged in

activities that allowed me to discuss and test ideas (including three public forums/presentations), gather experimental data and conduct site observations and documentation. The focus of this semester has been on Purdue University and figuring out what the basis for a comparative component of the project will be. However, I also photodocumented visual/material culture at two California campuses (UC
Berkeley and CSU Fresno) while visiting these sites on other business.
Work completed in the fall, now makes it possible to devise an interview protocol and seek IRB Human Subjects approval.
Below is a descriptive list of my activities:
Public forums and presentations:
[1]
The meeting was an opportunity to present the conceptual framework underlying the project and discuss specific campus locations with a small group of faculty and graduate students.
Several insights resulted from this workshop: a.
Attention to the temporal orientation of campus visual/material culture, in addition to identity-based dimensions, is worthy of further investigation through comparative study. A question of interest here is: How do universities define and balance “tradition” and
“innovation” through campus visual/material culture?
Related to this are questions about the role of art, architecture, landscape and monuments on campus. This points to the need for broadening or supplementing the theoretical framework provided by Boym. b.
“Aesthetic agency” as a potential theoretical framework for understanding the distribution/concentration of power that shapes the visual/material culture of a campus in variable dimensions (permanence, location— department, public space, student space etc. and significance of aesthetic expertise).

c.
Problematizing “aesthetics” within the contexts of campuses and their surrounding communities will be a necessary part of the discursive work on this project.
[2]
For this event, I created a mapping workshop that focused on participants’ psychological maps of their home campuses and explored their awareness of campus visual cultures (monuments, artworks, etc.). A primary insight gained from this workshop was extreme varying levels of visual culture awareness (and the need to develop a way to even talk about such an awareness) and the significance of considering landscape or ‘nature spaces’ as part of gendered campus visual culture experiences.
[3]
This presentation was for an introductory women gender and sexuality studies course comprised primarily of freshman and sophomore students.
Insights from this experience included:
People with comparative knowledge and experience deriving from significant time spent on at least one other campus are more critical and reflexive in their discussions of visual and material culture on campus. This could be an important factor in understanding differences between faculty, grads and undergrads.
Students do have influence on representations of women. For example, I was surprised to find out that one of the undergrads in this course participated in voting for images that now hang in
LaVazza café in the new HTM building (I thought these were commercial images chosen by the company). (However, I don’t know what the palette of choices were.)

In general, the students had no language for talking about architecture beyond a simple like or dislike of brick buildings.
At least one student was aware of the connections between the domination of brick as a building material and the Purdue family history. For him, this seemed to be a positive characteristic of Purdue and associated with tradition.
Observation and Documentation
[1] Comparative observations of everyday interactions with three significant campus monuments (bronze sculptures): Amelia Earhart,
Neil Armstrong and John Purdue (ongoing)
These observations reveal questions about gendered practices in relation to campus material culture (i.e. stories of male students placing bananas in the hand of Amelia Earhart vs. gestures of reverence and tourist practices associated with Armstrong) and the locations they inhabit on campus: tourist/public space vs. student/domestic space
[2] Creation of postcard series of major monuments and artworks on campus as part of a possible artistic intervention (ongoing)
[3] Photodocumentation of representations of women and minorities on campus to create a database for comparison with other campuses
(ongoing). This database will also provide significant source material for future artistic endeavors and a digital humanities project grant
(NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant)
Next Steps (Spring 2015 to Fall 2016) o
Develop an interview protocol and submit IRB human subjects application. o Photo-documentation trips and arrange interviews at:
3 peer institutions/R1 institutions with curated public art programs
University of Michigan (peer institution, Big ten)
MIT (land grant institution, strong STEM institution)
UC San Diego (land grant institution

3 institutions whose student bodies are primarily women or minorities
Tuskegee University (land grant, HBCU)
Howard University (HBCU) or Spelman (HBCU, women)
Wellesley (women)
FINAL NOTE
This fellowship came at a critical juncture in the tenure process and has had a profoundly positive impact by creating precious time to focus on creative production in general. Having a reduced teaching load not only allowed me to develop this project, but to complete projects that were already in the pipeline (an exhibition in Paris, a journal publication, a successful interdisciplinary grant application from the
College of Liberal Arts, 3 submissions for exhibitions, and a collaborative performance project at an international conference held at Purdue.)
Special thanks go to: Ileana Cortes Santiago, Tammy Hoffman and Katie
Pope for their support throughout the semester and beyond.