Emma John

Emma John‘s scholarship always comes back to the home in American life. She is currently looking at the creation of house museums in the United States during the nineteenth century and how the women who created them expressed a gendered and racialized nationalism through domestic space. A public humanities framework is vital for her scholarship on museums and nationalism because she is mainly interested in how a history industry developed outside of the academy.  She believes that scholars need to take seriously the ways that the public understands and utilizes the past, especially in the service of nationalism, as is so often the case in the U.S. House museums are just one way that Americans have engaged with the past outside of the academy, but they are a rich source for understanding the connections between gender, race, and history. 

Connect with Emma on LinkedIn.

Read about Emma’s internship at the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation and her work on the Casa de la Guerra site.

Watch Emma’s Winter 2021 Public Humanities Graduate Fellows Program Capstone Presentation: