Subject: Appointment of Amelia Wong---new Museum Studies Program faculty
Date: July 5, 2012 12:05:02 PM EDT
July 5, 2012
The Museum Studies Program is pleased to announce the appointment of
our new assistant FT professor, Amelia Wong. Amelia holds a BA from
UCLA in history and a PhD in American Studies from the University of
Maryland, College Park. Amelia’s scholarship focuses on how museums,
especially those concerned with democratization, can engage critically
with technology for their goals. Her dissertation, “Museums, Social
Media, and the Fog of Community,” reflects her research interests and
is the first book-length project about social media in American
museums.
Amelia is currently the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s senior social
media strategist. Under her direction, for example, the USHMM’s
Twitter community has grown from 2000 to over 100,000 people. Amelia
also developed and produced an ongoing Web series, “Curators’ Corner,”
which gives the public, donors and others an inside look at the
museum’s collections via short multimedia presentations narrated by
USHMM staff. During her first year at the museum, Amelia proposed,
planned and implemented the innovative “Conscience Unconference,” a
participant-generated and led conference on the topic of social media
for social good. She has a strong reputation in the museum community
as a communicator, educator and innovator.
This fall Amelia will be teaching a seminar class entitled, “Museums,
Interactivity, Technologies,” on Thursday from 4:10 to 6 pm at 1310 G
Street N.W. A description follows:
The concept of interactivity in modern museum practice has developed
roughly over the past half-century. Facing various challenges, museums
embraced the notion of interactivity to reframe the traditional
relationship between museums and their audiences from one where the
latter passively absorbed the knowledge of the former, to one where
both sides actively negotiated knowledge and meaning. Museums have
often turned to various technologies to support this pursuit.
This course takes an interdisciplinary and cultural studies approach
to interrogating the notion of interactivity and the use of
technologies in modern museum practice. Whereas today’s practitioners
often reduce the definitions of interactivity and technology to
electronic and digital technologies, this course situates current
technologies within history and culture, recognizing them as in the
process of remediation and convergence. Students will acquire a broad
understanding of how and why museums turn to interactivity and
technology to expand and serve audiences; inform, communicate,
educate, and collaborate; for collections and exhibition practices;
and for marketing and development. Students will learn about a wide
array of technologies currently used by museums, including
“interactives,” immersive installations, video, websites, social
media, and mobile technologies. The course will expose students to
theory and practice of interactivity and technology in museums to
build knowledge and critical thinking about how to choose, implement,
and evaluate the use of technology as practitioners.
--
Kym S. Rice, Director, Museum Studies Program-The George Washington
University, 1310 G Street N.W., Suite 690, Washington, D.C. 20005
202-994-7030