Language and Literature Curatorial Internship

Desired Majors and Areas of Study: English, Rhetoric and Composition, African American Studies, Museum Studies, Cultural Studies

The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s (NMAAHC) Office of Curatorial Affairs (OCA) facilitates the intellectual work of the Museum by collecting artifacts, ensuring collection preservation and stewardship, conducting research and scholarship, and sharing the rich history and culture of African Americans and all people of African descent with a diverse public in accessible, multifaceted ways including exhibition, digitization, and publication.

The Language and Literature Internship will provide the opportunity for the selected applicant to learn about curatorial department operations and curatorial practices. These operations and practices include curatorial team dynamics and collaborative work with IT, Education, Public Relations, Advancement, Collections Management, Conservation, and Digitization. The intern will also learn about 1) the role and value of collections in documenting history, 2) curatorial strategies for collecting objects and archival materials, and 3) historical research methods associated with objects and topics. The bulk of this work will relate to projects in language and literature. Internship experiences will include the following:

• Research objects to consider for acquisition into the national collection
• Research topics and draft content to contribute to a literature collecting plan
• Help draft accession proposals for objects and collections
• Give presentations on object research to the collections committee

The Language and Literature Intern will assist with three special projects:

• Research on writers of African descent, their writing collectives, and their literary movements
• Updates to the James Baldwin Online Exhibition
• Updates to the Language Usage and Communications Manual

By the end of the internship, the intern will have learned and be able to do the following:

• Understand the workings of the Office of Curatorial Affairs--how its culture and history teams work together to carry out tasks related to scholarly exchange, collecting and researching objects, accessioning objects, and developing exhibition
• Draft justifications for accession proposals to acquire literary objects/collections
• Identify and conduct research on objects that support literary themes
• Know the names and dynamics of the writers' collectives and literary movements associated with major writers of African descent in the U.S. and around the world
• Know how to give presentations to the collections committee on objects/collections that they have researched
• Know how to use The Museum System (TMS) to secure information on literary objects in the collection
• Know how to apply their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills in a public history setting
• Understand how the Office of Curatorial Affairs works collaboratively with the museum's cataloguers, conservators, educators, public program specialists, fund raisers and other museum units

Duties Include (but are not limited to):

• Assist with updates to the James Baldwin bibliography and resource list
• Suggests ideas for new James Baldwin content and related images 
• Assist with updates to the Language Usage and Communications Manual
• Field requests from staff to augment entries and/or contribute new entries
• Field requests from other Smithsonian museums for access to the Language Usage and Communications Manual
• Maintain a database of requests from individuals outside the museum about language issues
• Attend project and department meetings to identify three departments in the museum
• Draft content on specific writers and identify and research related objects
• Draft content on national and international literary collectives and movements and identify and research related objects
• Draft justifications for accession proposals to present to the collections committee
• Draft content on specific writers and identify and research related objects