Last updated April 14, 2015
NICOLE BELOLAN
Department of History, University of Delaware
236 John Munroe Hall, Newark, DE 19716
[email protected] | nicolebelolan.org
Education
2010-present
Ph.D. Candidate, History of American Civilization, Department of History,
University of Delaware (ABD)
Dissertation: “Navigating the World: The Material Culture of Physical
Mobility Impairment in the Early American North, 1728-1861”
Adviser: Katherine C. Grier, Professor of History
2012
M.A., History, University of Delaware
2009
M.A., Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, University of
Delaware
2007
B.A., American Studies, with honors and high distinction, French minor,
The Pennsylvania State University
Academic Employment
Winter 2015
Teaching Assistant, Behind the Scenes: Museums and Historic Sites,
University of Delaware
Summer 2014
Instructor, World History from 1400, University of Delaware
Spring 2013
Teaching Assistant, United States History to 1865, Prof. Peter Kolchin,
University of Delaware
Spring 2012
Teaching Assistant, United States History since 1865, Prof. Rebecca
Davis, University of Delaware
Fall 2011
Teaching Assistant, World History from 1400, Prof. Owen White,
University of Delaware
Cultural Heritage Employment
Sept. 2013-Dec. 2014 Graduate Assistant for Sustaining Places, Museum Studies Program,
University of Delaware, Newark, DE
Summer 2011
Post-Graduate Fellow in Historical Interpretation, Newport Historical
Society, Newport, RI
2009-2010
Cataloguing Assistant, IMLS Furnishing Textile Cataloguing Project and
Lunger Cataloguing Project, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, DE
Summer 2006
Keystone Intern, Pennsylvania Bureau for Historic Preservation,
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, PA
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Peer-Reviewed Publications
“From the Collection: ‘The Blood of Murdered Time’: Ann Warder’s Berlin Work Collection at
Winterthur, 1840-1865,” Winterthur Portfolio 45, 4 (Winter 2011): 321-352.
“Challenges in Cataloging and Researching Nineteenth-Century French Candy Wrappers,” Art
Documentation 29, 1 (Spring 2010): 16-22.
Popular Publications and Book Reviews
Book Review, Francis Cape, We Sit Together: Utopian Benches from the Shakers to the Separatists
of Zoar, in American Furniture (2014), 257-259.
“Inside the Decoy Shop: The Period Room at the Upper Bay Museum,” Museum Studies in Motion,
University of Delaware, February 21, 2014,
http://museumstudiesinmotion.blogspot.com/2014/02/inside-decoy-shop-period-room-atupper.html.
“Collecting Disability History,” UK Disability History Month 2013 series, Disability and Industrial
Society: A Comparative Cultural History of British Coalfields 1780-1948, November 25, 2013,
http://dis-ind-soc.org.uk/en/blog.htm?id=19.
“Vineland’s Closet,” Museum Studies in Motion, University of Delaware, February 24, 2013,
http://museumstudiesinmotion.blogspot.com/2013/02/vinelands-closet.html.
“Object Lesson: Desire Tripp and Her Arm’s Gravestone,” Common-Place, 13, 3 (Spring 2013):
http://www.common-place.org/vol-13/no-03/lessons/.
Selected Conference Presentations
“‘A Bed in the Parlor’: James Logan and Navigating Disability in Early America,” James Logan
and the Networks of Atlantic Culture and Politics, 1699-1751, Philadelphia, PA (September 18-20,
2014)
“Shawnee Captive, Unhealthy Sister, and Infirm Shaker: Constructing Histories about People with
Disabilities through the Things they Used at Home,” Society for the History of Early Republic
Annual Meeting (July 19, 2014)
“Museum Storage Wars: Designing Creative Storage Solutions on a Budget for your Small
Museum,” Small Museum Association Conference, Ocean City, MD (February 17, 2014)
“About Something of for Someone? Curatorial Ethics and Curatorial Debts,” roundtable participant,
speaking re Metropolitan Museum of Art programming for children with mobility impairments in
the early twentieth century, Beyond a Logic of Debt, Toward an Ethics of Public Dissent, 2013
American Studies Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C. (November 22, 2013)
“Aunt Patty’s Furniture: Adult Cradles and the History of Physical Mobility Impairment in Early
America,” New Thoughts on Old Things: Four Centuries of Furnishing the Northeast, Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, MA (October 4, 2013)
“‘A new four-wheel carriage, constructed for an invalid’: Performing Gouty Invalidism in
Eighteenth-Century America,” Cripples, Idiots, Lepers, and Freaks: Extraordinary
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Bodies/Extraordinary Minds, 2012 CUNY Graduate Center English Student Association
Conference (March 22-23, 2012)
“‘The Blood of Murdered Time’: Interpreting Yesterday’s and Today’s Ideas of Berlin Needlework
as Craft and Kitsch,” Craft and Community: Negotiating Objects Across Time and Place, Material
Culture Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (May 20-21, 2011)
“‘while on thy couch reclining’: Ann Warder’s Berlin Wool Work and Chronic Illness in Midnineteenth-century Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Hospital History of Women’s Health Conference,
Philadelphia (April 7, 2010)
“The Close Stool: A Toilet for a Society of Propriety,” Gordon Seminar of the Museum of Early
Southern Decorative Arts Conference for American Material Culture, Winston-Salem, NC (October
10, 2008)
Invited Talks and Workshops
“A Bed in the Parlor: James Logan and Navigating Disability in Early America,” Hale-Byrnes
House, Newark, DE (October 2015)
“Berlin Needlework: Victorian Craft or Kitsch?,” National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, Delaware (March 2015)
“What Can we Learn about Disability History from Material Culture?,” Workshop for Material
Culture Living and Learning Community, University of Delaware (February 12, 2015)
Taming Your Treasures: Collections Management for Beginners, Sustaining Places, Museum
Studies, University of Delaware (September and November, 2014)
Social Media and Blogging for Academics workshop, Delaware Institute for the Public Humanities
(DELPHI), University of Delaware (June 5, 2014)
“Gout Cranes, Peg Legs, and Adult Cradles: What was it Like to be Disabled in Early America?,”
Objects as Cultural Artifacts lectures series, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, University of
Delaware, Wilmington, DE (April 30, 2014)
Museum Storage Wars: Designing Creative Collections Storage on a Budget for Your Small
Museum, Sustaining Places, Museum Studies, University of Delaware (November and March, 2013
and 2014)
“Researching Women and Mid-Late Nineteenth-Century Material Culture,” guest lecture for Prof.
Jennifer Van Horn’s course on Gilded Age America, Smithsonian-Mason Masters Degree Program
in the History of Decorative Arts (June 5, 2012 and October 1, 2014)
“‘The Blood of Murdered Time’: Connoisseurship and Context of Ann Warder’s Berlin Work
Collection,” Winterthur Needlework Conference (October 22, 2011)
“Dismembered Memory: Desire Tripp and Her Arm’s Gravestone,” Newport Historical Society
Annual Meeting Keynote Address, Newport, RI (September 22, 2011)
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Outreach and Service
Board Member, Hale-Byrnes House, Newark, DE (2014-2015)
Coordinator (Fall 2014) and Committee Member (2014-present), History Workshop, Department of
History, University of Delaware
Organizer, Professional Development Workshops for Graduate Students, Department of History,
University of Delaware, Newark, DE (2013-2014)
Coordinator and contributor, collaborative digital humanities project by History of American
Civilization Ph.D. students, History of American Civilization Ph.D. Program Blog (February 2013present), http://sites.udel.edu/amciv-blog
Board Member at Large (2013-2015) and Mid-Atlantic Representative, American Association of
Museum Curators’ Committee (2009-2014)
Liberal Arts Alumni Mentor for careers in cultural heritage institutions and museums, Penn State
(2009-present)
Selected Fellowships, Grants, Awards, and Scholarships
University Dissertation Fellowship, University of Delaware (2015-2016)
Winterthur Library Dissertation Fellowship (2015-2016)
Center for Historic American Visual Culture Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society (2015)
Caesar Rodney Fellowship, General Society of Colonial Wars (2015)
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science (PACHS) Short-term Research Fellowship (2015)
Winterthur Library Short-term Research Fellowship (2015)
Delaware Public Humanities Institute Fellowship (DELPHI), Center for Material Culture Studies,
University of Delaware (2013-2014)
Decorative Arts Trust Dewey Lee Curtis Summer Research Grant (2008)
Professional Memberships
Disability History Association | Small Museum Association | Society of Early Americanists |
Society of the History of the Early American Republic |
Society of Winterthur Fellows