Munson Institute
“The American Maritime People” at The Frank C. Munson Institute
An NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers
June 23- July 25, 2014
“The American Maritime People” National Endowment Humanities (NEH) Institute at Mystic Seaport provides college teachers with the opportunity to enhance course offerings by studying the influence of maritime activities on U.S. history and culture. This, the fifth NEH Institute at the Munson Institute, will build on the latest research in studies of the sea, which has recently been the focus of increasing scholarly interest. In a series of seminars, “The American Maritime People” will employ interdisciplinary perspectives on American maritime studies, with an emphasis on the most recent social, cultural, and ecological approaches.
The campus for the five weeks of study will be Mystic Seaport –The Museum of America and the Sea. As the largest maritime museum in the nation, Mystic Seaport includes 17 acres of riverfront property, 60 historic buildings, 550 traditional watercraft, 1,000,000 manuscript pieces, and many thousands of artifacts. While the seminar hall will be the focus of the institute, Mystic Seaport and the maritime region of which it is a part, will be used to inform further study through group tours and individual exploration.
About the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport
The Frank C. Munson Institute 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 lectures, conferences, networking, and the Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship the Institute fosters the advanced study of the American maritime experience.
The Institute was founded in 1955 by Edouard Stackpole, curator of Mystic Seaport, 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.