Cathy Stanton, Ph.D.

I'm a late-blooming scholar, a transplanted Canadian, and an anthropologist among historians. I started out being fascinated by myth and ritual, found my way from there into American history (via the Civil War and studying the people who reenacted it), and then started trying to figure out where the heritage business fits in the postindustrial knowledge and service economy. More recently, I've been thinking about ways to connect my interest in commemorative behavior with the ever more urgent questions about how we might create a less energy-intensive, growth-oriented society, a concern that has led me to explore heritage and automobility as well as the convergence of historic sites and working agriculture. I live in north-central Massachusetts, a part of New England most people don't know about (which is just fine with us, thank you) with my husband, Fred, who plays the trumpet, and a fluctuating number of cats, who don't.

Curriculum vitae

Education

2004 - Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Doctorate Program, Tufts University
        Areas of concentration: Cultural Anthropology/History/Museum and Heritage Studies
        Dissertation: "The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City"
1997 - M.A., Graduate Program, Vermont College of Norwich University
        Areas of concentration: Cultural Anthropology/American History/Performance Studies
1994 - B.A., Adult Degree Program, Vermont College of Norwich University

Research interests

Tourism, heritage, museums, public history, myth and ritual, cultural performance, culture-led redevelopment, automobility

Teaching and consulting

2004-present - Lecturer, Anthropology Department, Tufts University
Undergraduate courses: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology (ANTH 10), Global Cities (ANTH 20), History of Anthropological Thought (ANTH 130), Myth, Ritual, and Symbol (ANTH 132), Performance and Politics (ANTH 149A), The Anthropology of Tourism/Tourism and Social Justice/Tourism and Ethnography: Separated at Birth? (ANTH 149-04, ANTH 185-04), Cars, Culture, & Place (ANTH 149-18, ANTH 185-18), Food, Culture, and Community + The Civil War in American Memory (Experimental College)
2001-present - Affiliate Faculty, B.A. in Liberal Studies/Union Institute & University
1998-present - Consultant, Northeast Region Ethnography Program, National Park Service
2005 - Lecturer, History Department, Suffolk University
Undergraduate course: Public History (HST 310)

Selected academic publications, reports, and recent conference papers

• "Plant Yourself in My Neighborhood": An Ethnographic Landscape Study of Farming and Farmers in Columbia County, New York (for Martin Van Buren National Historic Site/National Park Service/Northeast Region Ethnography Program - currently in draft)
• "Re-Occupying Plimoth," Plenary session remarks, New England American Studies Association conference, Plymouth, MA (November 2011)
• Review of "Tangible Things" exhibit, Journal of American History, Dec. 2011
• "Public Histories of Urban Renewal" panel, National Council on Public History conference, Pensacola, FL (April 2011)
• "When Polonia met Americana: Polish Americans in Salem, Massachusetts," Polish American Historical Association/American Historical Association conference, Boston, MA (Jan. 2010)
• Review of Edward Slavishak, Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh for Anthropology of Work Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2010)
• "The 'New Lowell' in the Cultural Supply Chain: A Post-American Perspective," New England American Studies conference, Lowell, MA (2009)
• Review of John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in The Public Historian, (Volume 31, No. 4, Fall 2009)
• Review of Andrew Dolkart, Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street for H-Urban (August 2009)
• "Road-Trip as Ritual: Moving the Car into the Foreground," National Council on Public History conference, Portland, OR (March 2010)
• with Jane Becker, "In the Heart of Polish Salem: An Ethnohistorical Study of St. Joseph Hall and Its Neighborhood." Special Ethnographic Study produced for Northeast Ethnography Program, National Park Service and Salem Maritime National Historic Site
• "Driven to the Past: History in a Changing Climate," Keynote address from June 2009 Mass.History conference "With Power for All: Energy and Social Change in Massachusetts"
• Review of John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in The Public Historian, (Fall 2009)
• "The Past as a Public Good: The U.S. National Park Service and 'Cultural Repair' in Postindustrial Places" in People and Their Pasts: Public History Today, Hilda Kean and Paul Ashton, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• "Performing the Postindustrial: The Limits of Radical History in Lowell, Massachusetts." Radical History Review 98(2007)
• with Myrna Breitbart, "Touring Templates: Cultural Workers and Regeneration in Small New England Cities." In Tourism, Culture and Regeneration, Melanie K. Smith, ed. (CAB International, 2006)
• "Cultures in Flux: New Approaches to 'Traditional Association' at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site." (PDF) Ethnographic Overview and Assessement produced for Northeast Ethnography Program, National Park Service.
• American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C. Paper: "Modernity's Exoskeleton: Cultural Work as Shelter from the Storm" (2007)
• National Council on Public History conference, Santa Fe, NM. Paper: "The Lowell Delivery System and Radical Public History" (2007)
• The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006)
• "Serving Up Culture: Heritage and its Discontents at an Industrial History Site." International Journal of Heritage Studies (Vol. 11, December 2005)
• "Outside the Frame: Assessing Partnerships between Arts and Historical Institutions." The Public Historian, winter 2005
• Society for Applied Anthropology conference, Santa Fe, NM (March 2005). Paper: "Hybrid Traditions: National Parks as Ethnographic Resources for 'Living Historians'"
• with Stephen Belyea, "'Their Time Will Yet Come': The African American Presence in Civil War Reenactment" in Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, Martin Blatt, Tom Brown, Donald Yacovone, eds. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)
• "Historians and the Web," review essay, The Public Historian (vol. 23:1 [2001],119-125)
• "Battle Road 2000," review article, Journal of American History (vol. 87:3 [2000], 992-5)

Awards and academic service

• Digital Media Editor (2011-present) and chair, Digital Media Group, National Council on Public History (2008-present)
• Editor, "Off the Wall" (2010-present)
• Board member, National Council on Public History (2008-2011)
• 2007 National Council on Public History book award for The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City
• Editor, H-Public listserv, (2005-present)
• Honorable mention, Alliance for Community Media, for documentary video "An Evening with Howard Zinn," 2004
• Graduate student paper award, Northeastern Anthropological Association, 2003
• Finalist, Judge's Special Merit Award, Alliance for Community Media, for documentary video "Music for the People: The Life and Times of the Orange Community Band," 1998

Home . About . Lowell Experiment . Farming . Automobility . Reenactment . Links

Cathy Stanton . 222 New Salem Road, Wendell, MA 01379-9707 . (978)544-5226 . cstanton[at]tiac.net