Smith College / Smithsonian Institution Internship Program s1

Smith College / Smithsonian Institution Internship Program

Research Project Proposal

Name of Supervisor(s): Diana Baird N’Diaye

Department or Office: Research and Education Museum/Unit: Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Phone Number: 202-633-6472 Email Address: [email protected]

1. Please provide information on your research and/or the work of your office:

“The Will to Adorn” is a multi-sited collaborative, folk cultural research and public presentation initiative of the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage on the diversity of African American identities as communicated through the cultural aesthetics and the arts of the body, dress and adornment. The project works with academic and museum scholars, educators, community based professionals, lay researchers, and cultural practitioners in target cities to document and present the wearable art traditions of African Americans from diverse regional, ethnic, occupational, faith and ideology based communities throughout the United States.

The components of the project include community-based training and “reciprocal” research (including ethnographic fieldwork and oral history interviews along with photographing documentation.) This research is shared through an on-line research protocol for multi-sited collaborative research that is being pioneered through this project. The project is shared with the public in the summer of 2013 through a Folklife Festival program entitled “The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style and Identity.

2. Describe the project (include duties, nature and scope of the work), and indicate any particular academic background or specific courses needed as preparation:

In the Fall semester of 2013, the project staff, including our Smith College intern will be working on preparations for a series of online youth conferences with participants from schools, museum and community youth groups throughout the country. This aspect of the Will to Adorn consists of a folk cultural documentation training program for based on the research model developed for the project. The Smith intern will also act as the project liaison to a symposium on dress organized by Smith College for November 2013.

3. Please describe possible research products an intern might develop, either from the project or the work of your office, to fulfill the academic requirement of the Smith College Program:

The intern will assist Will to Adorn’s principal investigator, the W2A project manager, and our partners at Learning Times to research and develop background materials for the on-line conferences for youth. He or she will also consolidate materials coming from the Will to Adorn Festival Program for a website and the Smith symposium. (We are open to the possibility of working with more than one Smith student on this project.)