AAA Summer Interns Work with Curators and Underwater Archaeologists
AAA interns have worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art since 2012 thanks to anthropologist Johnetta B. Cole, the museum’s director. This year the post went to Chrislyn Laurore, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College last spring with a double major in anthropology and Africana Studies. Her honors thesis addressed the material heritage of colonialism in Capetown, South Africa, where she studied during her junior year.
Chrislyn worked with curator Christine Kreamer and met one-on-one with Johnetta Cole. “To be able to sit down with both of them and be able to learn about their educational and personal trajectories was really inspiring,” she said. Contact with the museum’s director included personal mentoring. “She did bring me into her office and we spent close to two hours,” Chrislyn said. Like Cole, “I am also a Florida girl,” she added proudly.
Kory Cooper was the sixth summer intern hosted by AAA in collaboration with the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). Now in his senior year at landlocked Missouri State University, he found few opportunities to pursue his interest in underwater archaeology. “This has been an eye-opening experience,” he said of his time at NHHC. “I had one oceanography class but otherwise I learned on my own, and in the field school I attended in Jamaica. It has been an amazing time.”
Kory boated on the Pawtuxet River, where the archaeology crew was using hydro-probing techniques to locate a Revolutionary War-era fleet.
This program, funded entirely by member donations, will host two new interns in the summer of 2017.