Museums Connect stands at the intersection of public history and public diplomacy. The program, which has both public history and public diplomacy agendas, is sponsored by the United States Department of State and administered by the American Alliance of Museums. This dissertation examines the competing impulses of transnational public history and public diplomacy made manifest in Museums Connect and its ramifications for public history theory and practice. The project demonstrates both the seeming similarities between public history’s ideas of shared authority, dialogic museum practice, and community engagement and public diplomacy’s “people-to-people” diplomacy, as well as the limits of these similarities. This dissertation also considers the ramifications of these dynamics on museum and public history practice and theory. It is shown that the assumptions of public diplomacy found in Museums Connect inform the program’s structure and operation, while also precluding a truly shared authority between the American museums and their international partners. The appointment of the American museums as “lead” museums and the Department of State’s choice to focus on young people as the target audience for the program foregrounds didactic relationships between the museums and their “communities” for the projects. Through three case studies of Museums Connect projects between the United States and Afghanistan, Morocco, and South Africa, this dissertation challenges the seminal theoretical literature of public history, articulated in Michael Frisch’s A Shared Authority, that interpretive and meaning-making authority in public history is inherently shared. Each case study reveals different factors that either promote or preclude more balanced power dynamics between the museums and their communities within the broader power dynamics established by the grant. Staff reflection-in-action, project activity and partner museum choice, and the non-American public history and museological contexts are all revealed to uniquely influence the dynamics between the museums and their communities. Throughout, the agency of the non-American participants, highlighted through the responses and reactions to the unequal dynamics of the projects, complicates notions of the singular democratic public sphere that underpin the paradigm of the museum as forum.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on June 24, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Karen M. Kovacik, Susanmarie Harrington, Robert Rebein. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78).

abstract: Museums reflect power relations in society. Centuries of tradition dictate that museum professionals through years of study have more knowledge about the past and culture than the communities they present and serve. As mausoleums of intellect, museums developed cultures that are resistant to relinquishing any authority to the public. The long history of museums as the authority over the past led to the alienation and exclusion of many groups from museums, particular indigenous communities. Since the 1970s, many Native groups across the United States established their own museums in response to the exclusion of their voices in mainstream institutions. As establishments preserving cultural material, tradition, and history, tribal museums are recreating the meaning of "museum," presenting a model of cooperation and inclusion of community members to the museum process unprecedented in other institutions. In a changing world, many scholars and professionals call for a sharing of authority in museum spaces in order to engage the pubic in new ways, yet many cultural institutions s struggle to find a way to negotiate the traditional model of a museum while working with communities. Conversely, the practice of power sharing present in Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tradition shaped a museum culture capable of collaboration with their community. Focusing on the Akwesasne Museum as a case study, this dissertation argues that the ability for a museum to share authority of the past with its community is dependent on the history and framework of the culture of the institution, its recognition of the importance of place to informing the museum, and the use of cultural symbols to encourage collaboration. At its core, this dissertation concerns issues of authority, power, and ownership over the past in museum spaces. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2013

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Beyond the boundaries of the classroom, the idea of emancipatory authority is a worldview which encourages the empowerment of the public to embrace different roles of authority, and take action as members of the local, regional, and global community. Within the classroom, emancipatory authority provides students and teachers with opportunities to create an atmosphere where both parties take responsibility for the development of education in one community, as well as creating a diverse environment where voices and ideas blend, and without the traditional classroom hierarchy.

Nesta pesquisa narrativa (CLANDININ; CONNELLY, 2000, 2011, 2015; CLANDININ, 2013), eu investiguei narrativamente as experiências de autoria vividas com meus alunos nas aulas de Inglês em uma escola pública em Uberlândia – MG. A pesquisa narrativa considera os termos-chave temporalidade, sociabilidade e lugar como parte do espaço tridimensional da pesquisa narrativa, um espaço de pesquisa criado no relacionamento entre o pesquisador e os participantes. Essa metodologia é baseada em uma ontologia deweyana da experiência. Meus alunos do sexto ano (o Everton, a Kamilly Vitória, a Lowise e a Manoela) e a Larissa, mãe da Lowise, contam como viveram suas experiências de autoria na escola, e eu narro minhas experiências de tentativas de autoria da prática docente. Entre as contribuições para a área da Linguística Aplicada, considero, principalmente, as discussões sobre o processo de escrita em língua inglesa, sobre o processo de elaboração de materiais por parte dos professores de línguas, sobre as formas de avaliação nas aulas da escola pública e as possibilidades de trabalho com gêneros para ensinar e aprender inglês. Depois de investigar narrativamente as histórias vividas e narradas, eu as recontei e compreendi que as experiências de autoria que eu, o Everton, a Kamilly Vitória, a Manoela, a Lowise e a Larissa vivemos foram possíveis porque nós compartilhamos autoridade (OYLER, 1996) nas aulas de Inglês. Os resultados dessa pesquisa foram os seguintes: (1) Nós tivemos autoridade narrativa (OLSON, 1995) para vivermos histórias de liberdade, singularidade, responsabilidade e protagonismo, sempre considerando o aspecto ético-relacional da pesquisa narrativa (CLANDININ, 2013). (2) Nós nos tornamos autores quando deixamos nossa assinatura (MELLO, 2012a; CLANDININ; CONNELLY, 2000, 2011, 2015) na paisagem do conhecimento profissional, expressando nosso conhecimento prático pessoal (CLANDININ; CONNELLY, 1995). (3) As histórias de autoria foram construídas por meio das histórias que contamos e dos textos que produzimos nas aulas de Inglês, construídos na e pelas experiências vividas nas comunidades de construção de conhecimento (CRAIG, 1995; OLSON; CRAIG, 2001, 2002) que formamos. / In this narrative inquiry (CLANDININ; CONNELLY, 2000, 2011, 2015; CLANDININ, 2013), I narratively inquired into the experiences of authorship of the students I lived alongside in our English classes at a public school in Uberlândia - MG. Narrative inquiry considers the narrative commonplaces of temporality, sociality, and place as part of the three-dimensional inquiry space, a research space shaped in the relationships of the participants and the researcher. This methodology is based on a Deweyan ontology of experience. The grade six students Everton, Kamilly Vitória, Lowise, and Manoela, and Larissa (Lowise's mother), tell how they lived their experiences of authorship at school, and I tell my experiences of authoring my practice and the development of my signature as a teacher. Among the contributions to the area of Applied Linguistics, I consider, mainly, the discussions about the writing process in English, about the process of elaboration and creation of materials by language teachers, about the forms of assessment in English classes in public schools, and the possibilities of working with genres to teach and learn English. After inquiring into the stories we lived and told, I retold them and understood that the experiences of authorship that Everton, Kamilly Vitória, Manoela, Lowise, Larissa, and I lived were possible because we shared authority (OYLER, 1996) in English classes. The findings for this research are as follows: (1) We had narrative authority (OLSON, 1995) to live stories of freedom, singularity, responsibility and protagonism, always considering the ethicalrelational aspect of narrative inquiry (CLANDININ, 2013). (2) We become authors when we leave our signature (MELLO, 2012a, CLANDININ, CONNELLY, 2000, 2011, 2015) on the professional knowledge landscape of schools, expressing our personal practical knowledge (CLANDININ, CONNELLY, 1995). (3) We did this through the stories we told and texts we produced in English classes, built in and by the experiences lived in the knowledge communities (CRAIG, 1995; OLSON, CRAIG, 2001, 2002) we created. / Tese (Doutorado)