Smith College / Smithsonian Institution Internship Program
Research Project Proposal
Name of Supervisor(s): Barbara Clark Smith
Department or Office: Division of Political History
Museum/Unit: National Museum of American History
Phone Number: 202-633-3793/ 434-409-0691 Email Address: smithbc@si.edu
1. Please provide information on your research and/or the work of your office:
The Division of Political History collects, studies, and exhibits historical artifacts
related to the formal political system and the broader political culture of the United States.
My work within the division focuses in particular on popular political participation in the
colonial era, Revolutionary America, and the early republic. In addition, I collect materials
relating to recent and ongoing political conflicts as part of the division’s continuing project
of documenting American political demonstrations, organizations, and movements. Other
interests include gender history and public history. My current project, described below,
involves many eras and aspects of American history.
2. Describe the project (include duties, nature and scope of the work), and indicate any
particular academic background or specific courses needed as preparation:
“Ways of Seeing American History” is a publication and potential exhibition
project that explores key themes in American History through images of and research
about fascinating artifacts in the National Collections. It will illuminate for readers the
approaches that historians use to research and learn from the past, using historical
documents and museum artifacts. This project covers a wide array of topics within
American history and culture, including religious history, women’s history, political history,
social and cultural history, technology, and more.
A Smith College intern would assist this project by conducting photographic and
graphic research, acquiring photographs and permissions, gathering information within the
museum about the holdings of various collecting units, and producing a production
notebook under the rubric of “Ways of Seeing” the American past. That project will
involve some secondary and primary historical reading and includes space for research into
aspects of the project that the intern herself finds most engaging. Although the intellectual
and interpretive framework of the project is established, in other words, the intern will be
welcome to suggest and develop new directions and points of focus within that framework.
Research on such topics can be relatively independent or relatively guided, depending on
the intern’s experience and preferences. Therefore, background in American history or
culture would be very valuable, but no particular course is a prerequisite.
3. Please describe possible research products an intern might develop, either from the
project or the work of your office, to fulfill the academic requirement of the Smith College
Program:
An intern might develop a research paper or an annotated bibliography on a topic
within the project that she chooses to pursue more closely. Alternatively, she might prefer
working on another project of the Division of Political History, an exhibition on the history
of the U.S. democratic political system. The intern might explore specific topics from the
exhibition (as the founding era; suffrage rights; voting; citizenship; petitioning and protest),
or perhaps consider the historical interpretation and exhibition use of specific sorts of
artifacts (as maps, political pamphlets, campaign material, or political symbols). The
product of that work might be a powerpoint presentation, a reflective essay, or a mockup
design of an element of the exhibition.