Dr. Joanne Cacciatore is a research professor at Arizona State University, a bereavement educator, and the founder of the MISS Foundation. Her research focuses on traumatic grief and loss. In this interview, Dr. Cacciatore offers her thoughts on grief, some misconceptions, and her notion of fierce compassion. The interviewers and Dr. Cacciatore…

Christopher Bensch is vice president for collections and chief curator at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. He oversees the acquisition of and care for the world's most comprehensive collection of playthings. He also serves as the primary spokesperson for the National Toy Hall of Fame. Andrew Borman is digital games curator at…

This paper is a reflection on Bobby Habig, Preeti Gupta, and Jennifer Adams' article "Disrupting deficit narratives in informal science education: Applying community cultural wealth theory to youth learning and engagement" (EJ1307485). The article examines the significance of community cultural capital and the need for informal STEM…

In November 2019, the Smithsonian hosted the "Transatlantic Seminar for Museum Curators and Educators: Museums as Spaces for Social Discourse and Learning." The program brought together German and American museum professionals and was co-sponsored by the Leibniz Institution, the Smithsonian Institution, and Fulbright Germany. On July 20,…

The need for and impact of Object Based Learning (OBL) takes on particular relevance in institutions such as anthropology museums. Although museums in general have moved in the last several decades toward a renewed focus on their social impacts, anthropology museums in particular have needed to grapple with their own histories and the kinds of…

In the past 20 years, the number of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand has increased tremendously. Due to several criminal incidents in which offenders were Myanmar workers shown in the news over the last decade, many Thais have developed prejudice against Myanmar migrant workers. This article contends that a museum can be a starting point in…

Stacy Boldrick is a Lecturer in Art Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of Leicester, where she conducts research in iconoclasm and its significance for social groups and institutions. She is the author of "Iconoclasm and the Museum" (Routledge, 2020). In 2013, she collaborated with Tabitha Barber to curate Art Under Attack:…

Jon-Paul C. Dyson is vice president for exhibits and director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at The Strong. Trained as a cultural and intellectual historian, he joined The Strong in 1998 and has worked on and supervised the development of dozens of exhibits on play and video games. He initiated the museum's…

This review of the permanent exhibition of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva focuses on its representations of extreme forms of violence as well as humanitarian struggles against these. The article pays close attention to the role that theatre and performance plays in the construction of the museum as a space in which…

This review explores Jackson and Seiler's "I am smart enough to study postsecondary science: A critical discourse analysis of latecomers' identity construction in an online forum" by considering the analytic framework for figured worlds guiding this study. We consider the specific affordances of cultural production theory for examining…

Author Julie Pelletier recently became part of a new committee at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR): the Indigenous Education Working Group (IEWG). The IEWG is a working group made up of Indigenous individuals with a background in indigenous education. The first project the IEWG undertook was assisting with the development of Indigenous…

Education and outreach bring science to the general public, engage families, and ignite a passion for science in youth to seek careers in STEM. However, engagement in science depends on access, and language can be a major barrier. To ensure a welcoming, inclusive, and diverse community in the geosciences, we are calling for a community of practice…

As a companion to more data-driven articles and studies that consider the long-term impact of art museum teen programs on alumni, this article takes the form of a person to person interview with two founding teen members of important programs that emerged in the 1990s. Talking candidly about the impact of their program participation, Calder Zwicky…

From atop the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), juts the Tower of Hope, a 23-story illuminated glass architectural feature meant to symbolize "the goal of the human-rights journey," namely, "hope for a changed world." The prominence of hope as an ideal is literally set in stone at the CMHR. Hope for the museum itself is…

This review explores Archer, Dawson, Seakins, and Wong's "Disorienting, fun or meaningful? Disadvantaged families' experiences of a science museum visit" by examining the analytic frameworks guiding this study. To expand on Archer et al.'s use of feminist post-structuralist theories of identity we draw from the theory of…