Kathrinne Duffy

Education

• Ph.D., American Studies, Brown University, 2021. 
• M.A., Public Humanities, Brown University, 2015.
• M.A., History with certificate in Museum Studies, University of Delaware, 2012.
• B.A. with honors, English Literature, Swarthmore College, 2005.

Dissertation

The Phrenologists: Participatory Knowledge in Antebellum America

Preliminary Examination Fields

• Early America (directed by Seth Rockman)
• History of Science (directed by Lukas Rieppel)
• Material Culture and Museum Studies (directed by Steven Lubar, chair)

Awards & Research Fellowships

Dissertation Research Fellowships

• Interdisciplinary Opportunities Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I., September 2018-May 2019.
• Joukowsky Summer Research Award, Brown University, Summer 2018.
• Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2017-18.
• Research Fellowship, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 2017-18
• Research Fellowship, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, 2017-18.
• Hazeltine Entrepreneurial Research Fellowship, Brown University, 2017-18.
• Doctoral Research Travel Grant, Brown University, 2017-18.
• Summer Scholars Grant, Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, Brown University, Summer 2017.

Other Awards

• Conference Travel Grant, National Science Foundation, November 2018.
• Salomon Curricular Development Grant, Brown University, Spring 2016.
• Fulbright U.S. Student Program Fellowship, Montreal, QC, 2012-13.
• Full Tuition Scholarship for M.A., University of Delaware, 2010-12.

Honors & Prizes

• Awards for The Lost Museum exhibition:
  • • History in Progress Award, American Association for State & Local History, 2015.
    • Graduate Student Project Award, National Council on Public History, 2015.
    • Award of Merit, American Association for State & Local History, 2015.
    • Excellence in Exhibit Label Writing, American Alliance of Museums Curators Committee, 2015.
    • Honorable Mention for Exhibition Catalogue, New England Museum Association Publication Awards, 2015.
• Daniel Walden Prize (awarded annually to an outstanding emerging scholar in popular culture studies), Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association, November 2011.

Publications

Books

• Editor, The Public Humanities Idea: A Retrospective of the Masters Program at Brown University, 2005-2023 (Providence: Brown University, 2023).

Scholarly Journals

• “The Dead Curator: Education and the Rise of Bureaucratic Authority in Natural History Museums, 1870–1915,” Museum History Journal 10, no. 1 (2017): 29-49.
• “From Virtuous Visions to Rubbish and Rats: A Natural History Society in Gilded-Age Newport,” Newport History 85 (2016): 27-58.

Exhibition Catalogues

• “Flowers from Neptune’s Garden: Seaweed Albums and the Refinement of Perception,” catalogue essay for A Singularly Marine & Fabulous Produce: the Cultures of Seaweed exhibition at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2023.
• Essays in Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st Century Naturalist (New Haven, CT and Boston, MA: Yale University Press and Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2017):
  • • “A Naturalist’s Return: Travels of William Bartram — Reconsidered (2008), 116-121.
    • “Scala Naturae, 1994,” 154-157.
    • “The Ladies’ Field Club of York, 1999,” 164-167.
    • “Harbingers of the Fifth Season, 2014,” 178-181.
    • “Memory Box, 2016,” 182-183.
• “Museum-Maker: The Life of J.W.P. Jenks, 1819-1894,” catalogue essay for The Lost Museum exhibition at Brown University, May 2014.

Essays

• “Phrenology and the Civil War,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine blog, January 2017.
• Blog entries for The Lost Museum, 2014-15.
• “God’s Free Gift to Man and Beast: Henry Cogswell’s Temperance Fountains,” essay for Rhode Tour mobile history app, April 2014.
• “The Prison Palimpsest: A Former Tour Guide Looks Back at Eastern State Penitentiary.” The Appendix, March 2014.

Professional Experience

Museum & Cultural Institution Experience

• Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, M.A., February 2016 – October 2017.
• Buchanan/Burnham Fellow in Historical Interpretation, Newport Historical Society, Newport, R.I., Summer 2014.
• Alaska State Museums Intern, Tenakee Historical Collection, Tenakee Springs, AK, Summer 2012.
• Collections Intern, Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, PA, Summer 2011.
• Graduate Assistant, Museum Studies at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2010-12.
• Tour Guide, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Philadelphia, PA, Spring & Summer 2010.
• Associate Director of Development, Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Philadelphia, PA, 2009-10.
• Grant Writer → Grants Manager, Children’s Literacy Initiative, Philadelphia, PA 2006-09.

University Teaching Experience

• Instructor, Brown University, Spring 2016.
  • “Unsettled Things: Objects & Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America,” Department of American Studies, Spring 2016.
• Teaching Assistant, Brown University, Fall 2014 – Fall 2015.
  • “Crime and the City,” Urban Studies Program (Stefano Bloch), Fall 2015.
  • “Cities of Sound: Place and History in American Pop Music,” Department of American Studies (Samuel Zipp), Spring 2015.
  • “Museum Collecting and Collections,” Department of American Studies (Ron Potvin), Fall 2014.

Presentations

Invited Talks

• “A Visit to The Lost Museum: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Natural History Collection” (keynote), Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges workshop on the Art and Science of Natural History Collections, Middlebury College and the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, July 2024.
• “The Phrenologists: Participatory Knowledge in Antebellum America,” John Carter Brown Library, December 2018.
• “Phrenology and the Business of Popular Knowledge,” National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, July 2018.
• “Skulls, Selves, and Showmanship: Itinerant Phrenologists in Nineteenth-Century America.”
  • • Vermont Historical Society, November 2017.
    • Connecticut Historical Society, December 2017.
    • Massachusetts Historical Society, January 2018.
• “Gallery Talk: New Bedford Cabinet,” Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, November 2017.
• “Naturalists in Neptune’s Garden: Seaweed Collecting as Virtuous Amusement in Nineteenth Century America.” Newport Historical Society, April 2015.
• “Seaweed Collecting in New England, 1850-1900.” Roger Williams University, Department of Biology, Marine Biology & Environmental Science. Bristol, RI, September 2014, September 2015, December 2016.

Workshops

• Fellows Working Group Talk, Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. March 2018.
• Fellows Talk, American Antiquarian Society. February 2018.

Conferences

• “Commerce and Controversy: The Political Ambivalence of Practical Phrenology,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Cambridge, MA, July 2019.
• “Measure of the Mind: Phrenological Character Charts and the Marketing of Self-Knowledge,” History of Science Society. Seattle, WA, November 2018.
• “Collected Wonders: A Historian in the Contemporary Art World,” John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage, Alumni Conference. Providence, RI, October 2017.
• “The Lost Museum Collections Annex.” National Council on Public History. Nasvhille, TN, April 2015.
• “The Heroic Algologist: Collecting Seaweed Souvenirs in New England, 1850-1900.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association. Boston, MA, March 2015.
• “Missing Links: Embodiments of Evolution in Late Nineteenth-Century American Culture.” American Historical Association. New York, NY, January 2015.
• “The Lost Landscape: Non-Linear Storytelling and Urban Microhistory in Montreal.” National Council on Public History. Monterey, CA, March 2014.

Performances

• The Phantom Archive
  • #1: “Keepers of Beasts,” John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage, March 2018.
• Jenks Society for Lost Museums, “Re-Collecting the Lost Museum: Curious Afterlives of Natural History Specimens.”
  • • John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage, Providence, RI, May 2015.
    • Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, Providence, RI, May 2015.
    • Morbid Anatomy Museum, Brooklyn, NY, November 2014.

Service

University & Academic

• Library Advisory Board, Brown University, January 2015 – August 2017.
• Guest Co-Editor (with Steven Lubar, Lukas Rieppel, and Ann Daly), Museum History Journal special issue on “Lost Museums,” May 2015-December 2016.
• Organizing Committee, “Lost Museums: Symposium on the Ephemerality & Afterlives of Museums & Collections,” Brown University, Providence, RI, May 2015.

Community

• Co-Founder and Co-Organizer, Pen & Shovel Club, September 2016 – August 2017.

Languages

• French (reading proficiency)