A Usable Past

Erin is a public historian and archival technician based out of Washington, D.C.  She is currently enrolled in a doctoral program in the History department at American University where she is investigating intersections of identity (particularly gender, sexuality, race, age and class) in Shirley Chisholm’s political career.

She holds an M.A. in Public History from American University, where she focused on ways of interpreting the past to the public outside of formal academic settings, particularly within archives and museums.

Erin has worked on a number of interpretive projects as a public historian. In the spring of 2010 with colleague James Nelson, Erin created a museum theater script interpreting the invention process of Marion O’Brien Donovan’s “Boater,” the prototype for the disposable diaper.  The script, “Marion Donovan: Mother of Invention,” was produced for the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, to be performed at the museum by professional staff. She is also conducting oral histories with queer social activists in the D.C. area, including Debra Morris and Loraine Hutchins, and producing transcripts that will serve as historical documents for researchers in queer women’s activism.

Erin earned her A.B. from Smith College as an Ada Comstock Scholar with a dual degree in History and the The Study of Women and Gender before relocating to Washington.  While at Smith, she hosted two historically-based music programs on WOZQ 91.9FM, produced an oral history with activist, writer and Poet Laureate Lesléa Newman, processed archival documents at the Sophia Smith Collection, Women’s History Archives in Northampton, MA, and worked as an Archival Consultant at the Hatfield Historical Commission in Hatfield, MA.

During her time in Northampton, Erin also interned in the Film Programming Department of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, while working for the Northampton Arts Council from 2006-2009, where she created and ran YouthFilm, an annual festival of films produced by filmmakers aged 18 and under.

Erin has presented her work at a number of venues, including “Researching Cultural Feminism: The Works of Joan E. Biren and Olivia Records” at Smith College’s Celebrating Collaborations conference, and “Crossing Institutional Boundaries through History Museum Theatre” at the National Council on Public History‘s 2011 Annual Meeting.

She currently spends most of her time investigating film preservation, digital media, identity, archives, queerness, museums, and how history matters.