Useful Objects examines the history of American museums during the nineteenth century through the eyes of visitors, writers, and collectors. Museums of this period included a wide range of objects, from botanical and zoological specimens to antiquarian artifacts and technological models. Intended to promote “useful knowledge,” these collections generated broader discussions about how objects were selected, preserved, and classified. In guidebooks and periodicals, visitors described their experiences within museum galleries and marveled at the objects they encountered. In fiction, essays, and poems, writers embraced the imaginative possibilities represented by collections and proposed alternative systems of arrangement. These conversations interrogated many aspects of American culture, raising deep questions about how objects are interpreted and who gets to decide their value.
Useful Objects was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. You can find more information here.
Essays
“Bringing Museum Collections to Life.” Oxford University Press Blog (online, May 18, 2023)
“Vita: Elizabeth Bangs Bryant,” Harvard Magazine (2021)
Academic Publications
“What Makes History? New Stories from the Concord Museum Collection,” New England Quarterly (2024).
“The Useful Arts of Patent Models,” Modelwork: The Material Culture of Making and Knowing, ed. Martin Brückner, Sandy Isenstadt, and Sarah Wasserman. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
“Circulating Objects: Crèvecoeur’s ‘Curious Book’ and the Cabinet of the American Philosophical Society.” Early American Literature (2019). Winner of the Richard Beale Davis Prize for Best Article Published in Early American Literature.
“Novel Inventions: Emerson, Whitman, and the Patent Office Gallery.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (2017).