Kathryn E . Wilson | Georgia State University (original) (raw)

Books by Kathryn E . Wilson

Drawing on a variety of historical sources, including oral histories, this study draws on space a... more Drawing on a variety of historical sources, including oral histories, this study draws on space and place to explore the history of Philadelphia's Chinatown from its early decades as a mystified "bachelor" enclave, through the growth and development of the post WWII years, to the struggles of the late 20th century against urban renewal. Viewing Chinese American ethnicity and experience as the dynamic result of inherited cultural understandings at work in a changing urban environment over time, the project highlights the strategic work and active agency of community members in crafting an ethnic neighborhood that remains a "living community" amidst the myriad contemporary forces of downtown development, heritage tourism, and gentrification.

Articles and Chapters by Kathryn E . Wilson

Pennsylvania Legacies, 2012

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 2016

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 140 no. 3 , 2016

Transforming Practice: Selections from the Journal of Museum Education, 1992-1999, 2000

While many museums aim to reach underserved or nontraditional audiences, often including immigran... more While many museums aim to reach underserved or nontraditional audiences, often including immigrant communities, little attention is given to understanding what is actually meant by "immigrant" and how the experience of many immigrant groups may have unique implications for museums and other informal learning institutions. This article raises key questions about the relationship between museums and immigrant communities in the U.S., the diverse and multivalent nature of immigrant groups, and important issues that museums should consider when thinking about engaging immigrant audiences-such as cultural values, use of leisure time, perceptions of learning, language issues, and intergenerational differences. The authors draw upon recent visitor studies, audience research, and collaborations between museums and immigrant communities to support common themes and address implications for museums wanting to effectively engage immigrant audiences.

Conference Presentations by Kathryn E . Wilson

This afternoon I want to explore the role of public history, heritage, and historic preservation ... more This afternoon I want to explore the role of public history, heritage, and historic preservation projects in and with two immigrant communities in Philadelphia: Chinatown, located in Center City near Independence Mall, and the Latino barrio, located in a post industrial section of North Philadelphia. I have worked with both these communities in a public history context ---Latinos in a documentation and interpretation project (exhibits, programming, education) in 2003-4, and Chinatown in public programming, oral histories, and as the subject of my recent book. I want to reflect on the experience of these two communities --which also reference one another -in terms of the stakes involved when history and historic preservation is a pursued as a form of community development. Both these communities are historical centers of ethnic settlement as well as home to new immigrant populations. Both have histories, cultures, and historical sites that are vulnerable to neglect or loss. Both are historic neighborhoods that are not officially recognized as such. Both face fundamental dilemmas in preserving and presenting their history in the context of histories of misrepresentation, the priorities of heritage tourism and community redevelopment, and the costs of physical preservation, and the changing needs and contours of newcomers. How do they understand and address these dilemmas while also managing to create meaningful historical representations? Can they afford history and if so, what should that history look like? Chinatown Wilson, "We can't afford history" NCPH minicon 2015 2

How are the competing interests of preservation and redevelopment of urban space to be reconciled... more How are the competing interests of preservation and redevelopment of urban space to be reconciled, particularly when historically disadvantaged communities are involved? This paper explores this question in terms of the competing needs of the urban landscape embodied by historic structures and recent developments in the community of Philadelphia’s Chinatown by focusing on 1.efforts of the local Chinatown CDC to draw on the preservation, commemoration, and interpretation of its own heritage and history to promote community-driven investment and 2. the proposed development of “Chinatown North” abutting (and sometimes conflicting with) an emerging loft district and an attendant adaptive reuse initiative. While the former seeks to celebrate a dense historical landscape that, although seemingly intact, is intermittently preserved, the latter seeks to intervene in the historical landscape, building housing and green space to revitalize urban blight with a link to the themed historic past. Thus the landscape of Philadelphia’s Chinatown is deeply hybrid, compressed yet fragmented, embodying the dilemmas of ethnic themed urban space in economic and social transition. Its hybridity embodies its multiple lives as an historic neighborhood, themed ethnic space, touchstone for former residents, and a launch for new immigrants.

Book Reviews by Kathryn E . Wilson

Journal of American History, 2019

Journal of Urban History, 2019

Buildings and Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23:2 (Fall 2016), 129-30., 2016

Teaching Documents by Kathryn E . Wilson

Public history, or historical work for and with the public outside an academic setting, is a dist... more Public history, or historical work for and with the public outside an academic setting, is a distinct field that unites theory and practice, values both traditional and non-traditional evidence, pursues a variety of presentation formats, reframes historical questions and narratives, and engages the public in collaborative inquiry and representation. Inherently interdisciplinary, public history draws on history, ethnography, design, archeology, education, public policy, and multimedia. Its practitioners include museum professionals, government and business historians, historical consultants, archivists and librarians, teachers, cultural resource managers, curators, film and media producers, policy advisors, oral historians, preservationists, and many others. This course is intended as an introduction to key theoretical, methodological, and practical issues related to public history, including questions of audience; historical authority; the relationship between history and memory; models of community engagement; and the politics and ethics of public history practice. This course is designed for, but not limited to, students who might consider work in the varied fields of public history.

The purpose of the course is to introduce students to theories, methods, and applications of oral... more The purpose of the course is to introduce students to theories, methods, and applications of oral history as a distinct mode of historical inquiry. A major component of the course will be a project based on student research including an oral history interview and other related sources. Big ideas Through this course you will develop an understanding of: • Oral history in historical research and historiography • Issues of memory, reflexivity, and identity in oral history • Legal and ethical considerations in oral history • Oral history practice for community building and social justice advocacy Specific skills Through this course you will learn how to: • Plan an oral history project • Conduct an oral history interview • Transcribe, index, and edit oral history interviews • Preserve, interpret, and share oral histories in a variety of media • Best conduct and share oral histories in the Covid era

This course will introduce students to topics in the public preservation, interpretation, and com... more This course will introduce students to topics in the public preservation, interpretation, and commemoration of the past, with particular focus on issues and sites related to race, place, story, and memory in the United States. Each week we will unite theory and practice by reading thought pieces, examining case studies, exploring historic sites and museums, and evaluating digital resources. Students will complete an independent project to gain skills and visit local sites to learn from practitioners in the field.

We meet the past in every object it leaves behind. Not in ideas but in things."-William Carlos Wi... more We meet the past in every object it leaves behind. Not in ideas but in things."-William Carlos Williams Description and Course Objectives This course will provide an interdisciplinary overview of approaches to diverse material culture traditions including furniture, architecture, decorative arts, clothing and adornment, foodways, ritual, and other aspects of material life. We will explore issues of material form and style, fashion and consumption, design and construction, and multiple ways of understanding material objects in context, including cultural landscapes, ritual/performance theory, embodiment, and exchange relations. This course will emphasize material culture as a means of understanding everyday life historically, as well as contexts for the exhibition and interpretation of material objects in contemporary public contexts such as museums.

Pennsylvania Legacies, 2012

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 2016

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 140 no. 3 , 2016

Transforming Practice: Selections from the Journal of Museum Education, 1992-1999, 2000

Influenced by theories of gender as bodily performance, this dissertation reconstructs different ... more Influenced by theories of gender as bodily performance, this dissertation reconstructs different women's clothing strategies, and constructions of gender, race, and class in terms of women's dress in Philadelphia during the period 1825-1885. My concern is twofold: how women's clothing styles and practice emerged from women's everyday lives and interactions, and how discourses of fashion embodied and negotiated class and racial understandings in a gendered way. The project draws from a broad range of sources: surviving period costumes; women's letters, diaries, and household accounts; newspapers and periodicals; popular books; paintings; photographs and portraits; advertisements; trade cards; shop accounts; and city directories. It seeks to generate a grounded, localized study of women's dress practices as vernacular material culture, informed by current feminist thinking on gender, race, and the body.^ Dress is socially constitutive, producing social identities and relationships through bodily practice. For women, this practice is inherently problematic to the extent that fashion constitutes both women's self-representation as subjects as well as their objectification as subjected bodies. Nineteenth-century women's dress and deportment produced femininity as controlled and restrained ease, delicacy, and bodily self-consciousness, the body experienced as both a capacity and an object. Domesticity's clear gender definition, produced through the objectification of women and their removal from the "market," was central to dominant white middle-class identity. But women's relationship to fashion also critically located them in relation to the market and to processes of commodification through the production, marketing, and consumption of women's fashion. Women were both objects and agents in fashion as active lookers, readers, and producers of fashion. This conflicted ideological practice threatened the naturalized distinctions of middle-class culture and made women's bodies an important site for the inscription and exploration of anxieties about objectified, commodified bodies (such as slaves, workers, and prostitutes) in an enlightened republican society. As a result, the middle-class American discourse on identity and embodiment was internally instable and conflicted, and middle-class women's dress embodied a series of paradoxical positions: reproductive/erotic, singular/commodified, and object/subject.