Malgorzata J. Rymsza-Pawlowska

Assistant Professor

INTRODUCTION

Education & Training

PhD, American Studies, Brown University

A.M., Public Humanities, Brown University

M.A., Communication, Culture & Technology, Georgetown University,

B.A., History and Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University,

Community

I'm active in the digital humanities in a number of ways: I chair the Digital Humanities Committee that is part of EIU's Humanities Center, and I have been working with graduate students on the History Department's digital repositories: Localities and Past Tracker. 

Publications

 

PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES:
“Broadcasting the Past: History Television, “Nostalgia Culture,” and the Emergence of the Miniseries in the 1970s United States” Journal of Popular Film & Television, June, 2014

“Frontier House: Reality Television and the Historical Experience,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies (Spring 2007): 35-42.

With Fred Volk, Adam Stiska, “Assessing Online Lesson Plans,” Academic Exchange Quarterly (Winter 2004): 8:4, 44-48.

BOOK REVIEWS:
Review of Neil Harris, Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience (2013), History: Reviews of New Books, forthcoming, June 2015

Review of Tammy Gordon, The Spirit of 1976: Commerce, Community, and the Politics of Commemoration (2013), The Public Historian, February, 2015

Review of Alison Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums and the Immersive View (2008), Technology and Culture, (October, 2009): 33-34.

Funding & Grants

Participant, "Doing Digital History," NEH Summer Institute, George Mason University, 2014

Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship, 2011-2012

Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) Scholar, 2010-2011

Graduate Workshop Grant for “Affect Unbounded” (co-organizer and co-convener), Mellon Foundation, 2010-2011

Graduate Fellow, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, 2010-2011

Miss Abbott's School Alumnae Fellowship, Brown University, 2009-2010

Salomon Curricular Development Grant, Brown University, 2008

University Fellowship, Brown University, 2006-2008

Frequently Taught Courses

HIS2020: History of the United States Since 1877 (undergraduate)

HIS2091: History of the United States Since 1877- Honors (undergraduate)

HIS5110: History Museum Exhibits I (graduate)

HIS5111: History Museum Exhibits II (graduate)

Research & Creative Interests

Research Interests: 19th and 20th century U.S. social and cultural history, public history, museum studies, digital humanities, media and cultural studies, media history, critical theory

My current book project, History Comes Alive: Between Past and Present in the Making of Postwar Historical Consciousness (manuscript in preparation) traces the emergence of immersive engagement with the past in a variety of contexts in postwar American culture. I am especially interested in the affective qualities of historical memory—the impulse to understand the past on emotional rather than informational terms; through re-performance and interaction as opposed to observation and contemplation. I analyze archival evidence from a range of popular history initiatives including the building preservation movement in New England, federal and local celebration of the 1976 Bicentennial, the use of new media in history museum exhibition, history-based television programming, and protest organizations like the People’s Bicentennial Commission, a leftist organization that believed themselves to be the true heirs of the American Revolution. I read the production and reception of these texts in the context of a large-scale transformation in how Americans both understood and used the past in contemplating the present and forming and reforming identities.

I'm also interested in how the digital is impacting the work of history--the way that digital archives, data visualization, and nonlinear narrative via hyperlinking and annotation (to name a few) have changed and continue to change both academic and popular historical knowledge production. 

Professional Affiliations

American Historical Association (AHA)

American Studies Assocation (ASA)

National Council on Public History (NCPH)

Organization of American Historians (OAH)

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)

Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC)

Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP)

iHeritage Consortium