Campus Connection

Faculty member earns prestigious national institute spot to study material culture

Ariel Beaujot, UWL associate professor of history, was selected from a national pool to participate in a prestigious Summer Institute in New York. As a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Beaujot will study American material culture in 19th century New York during a four-week program, July 2-29. As a material culture scholar, Beaujot uses everyday physical objects to understand societies and cultures. Her research focuses on European material culture. The institute will give her a new perspective on American material culture, which will be important for expanding what she teaches UWL students, she says. “I’ll be able to give a perspective that will be more familiar and important to my Public and Policy History majors/minors who will go on to work in American institutions around the state like city planning offices, museums and archives,” explains Beaujot. The NEH institute will include visits to historic sites and museum collections, walking tours, and workshops devoted to hands-on engagement with objects. Beaujot was trained as a 19th century material culturalist as a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her first book, “Victorian Fashion Accessories,” published in 2012, is a material culture study of four women's objects — fans, parasols, gloves, vanity sets — and what these objects help explain about British women during this period. “What I find in the book is that objects can be used to display and ‘make real’ witness, class, gender, sexuality and an affinity with the British empire,” she explains. Beaujot has also launched material cultural projects locally with the [art]ifact exhibit at the Pump House Regional Art Center, which used objects made in La Crosse to understand what La Crosse was like in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beaujot’s “Hear, Here” oral history project in downtown La Crosse also has links to material culture. Beaujot will receive a $3,300 stipend to cover travel, study and living expenses for the NEH institute. “American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York” is one of 24 seminars and institutes offered for college and university teachers this summer through NEH. The more than 500 NEH Summer Scholars who participate in these programs will teach about 94,000 American students the following year. The National Endowment for the Humanities is a federal agency that supports enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities and cultural institutions each summer. It allows faculty to work in collaboration and study with experts in humanities disciplines.