Additional college and graduate programs:
Williams-Mystic
Spend a semester at Mystic Seaport studying the history, literature, science and policy of the world's oceans.
Paul Cuffe
Memorial Fellowship
Fellowship for the study of minorities in American maritime history.
The Munson Institute
The Frank C. Munson Institute, operating at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, since 1955, promotes learning, research, and the sharing of knowledge through annual summertime graduate courses in American maritime history, the support of research, and the dissemination of information through occasional lectures, conferences, networking and the Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship. The mission of the Institute is to promote the advanced study of and dissemination of information about the American maritime experience.
Learn more about the Institute:
Admissions
The Munson Institute welcomes graduate students, advanced undergraduates and others interested in immersing themselves in maritime history to apply for participation. Both six-week courses require significant reading; therefore those with a strong personal interest in the maritime past are encouraged to apply. Auditors are welcome. Applications are considered on a rolling basis, but space is limited.
The 2013 Institute will meet Monday through Thursday, June 24 through August 1, from 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Applications are available online or through:
The Munson Institute
Mystic Seaport
PO Box 6000
75 Greenmanville Ave.
Mystic, CT 06355-0990
Please return completed application with college transcripts (unless auditing) to the address above.
Financial aid funds are available to qualified matriculated students from college and universities. To learn more about this opportunity, contact the Munson Institute at 860.572.5359.
History of the Munson Institute
The Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea, was founded in 1955 by Edouard Stackpole, curator of the museum, and Robert Albion, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History at Harvard University. The graduate program was endowed by Cora Mallory Munson of Mystic's historic Mallory family, in honor of her husband, shipping magnate Frank C. Munson. The Munson Institute "served as the Museum's department of higher education," wrote its director Ben Labaree in 1995. He noted then that "a remarkable number of museum directors and curators in the maritime field are graduates of the Munson Institute program," while today it might be added that, having used the vast collections at Mystic Seaport, a substantial number of professors at colleges and universities around the country are also Munson alumni.
The Munson Institute also awards the Paul Cuffe Fellowships annually to scholars researching the role of minority groups in maritime America. The body of research amassed by Cuffe recipients and Munson graduates has added greatly to the multicultural face of American history, providing important resources in the examination of maritime Americans. More recently, the Munson graduate program has incorporated new scholarship with an environmental focus.
An NEH Summer Institute in 2012, The American Maritime People, provided an excellent opportunity for surveying the exciting new developments in the field of American maritime studies that are taking place rapidly, integrating the social and cultural approaches that have been so influential since the 1960s, with the new environmental perspectives that are increasingly important.