Cultural Remembrance in Bay Country:

An Investigation of How Marginalized Communities Are Represented in Museums of the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore

Primary Investigator:

Howard Ernst, Professor of Political Science (U.S. Naval Academy),

ernst@usna.edu (410) 349-7316

Research Team:

Rodrigo Cotto-Abreu (Gettysburg College), Danielle Drumm (Gettysburg College), Anjali Rao (Gettysburg College), LauraAnne Sinton (Gettysburg College), Micah Smith (Gettysburg College) and Jessica Stone (Gettysburg College)

Chesapeake Bay author Tom Horton famously described Bay Country as a place where the Bay shapes people as much, if not more, than where people shape the Bay. Those who have studied the culture of Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore typically focus on its much-celebrated watermen villages. Described as "Islands Out of Time," the standard interpretation often romanticizes the unique dialects, food traditions, religious activities, and customs that are associated with life in the watermen communities of the Eastern Shore. Museums, coffee table books, cookbooks, art galleries, and documentaries have highlighted a fading culture that is in jeopardy due to the declining health of the Bay.

But much less has been written about the Bay's other cultures. People of color in Bay Country have long created their own cultural identities, a world apart from the dominant culture that is so often celebrated. It was the Eastern Shore's African American culture that gave birth to Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. It was the Bay's rivers and streams that comprised much of the Underground Railroad. The Bay's first Western settlement, San Miguel de Guandape, was a Spanish settlement, formed decades before the English established Jamestown. More recently, the demands of the Bay's agricultural industry and seafood industry have given rise to an influx of new Spanish-speaking residents, who in turn are creating their own unique relationship to the Bay. And, of course, it was the area's native people (the Pocomoke, Choptank, Nanticoke, Matapeake and others) who lived in Bay Country for more than 1,200 years before the arrival of Captain John Smith.

This study explores how historically marginalized communities are represented at cultural centers throughout the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. In doing so, the research explores how cultural institutions shape, preserve, and challenge cultural identity in this unique area. The narrative these cultural centers depict influences our understanding of the relationship between the Chesapeake Bay and its people, and influences the public's commitment to the Bay's restoration. To study the topic, the research team developed an original Cultural Diversity Rubric (CDR) that combines elements of Price and Applebaum’s 2021 Cultural Context Belonging Scale and guidance from the National Endowment for the Arts 2014 Joint Research Symposium on Measuring Cultural Engagement.

This study’s research team will apply their Cultural Diversity Rubric during a field study in early 2023. The research team is led by Political Science Professor Howard Ernst. Ernst is the author of two Chesapeake Bay books and Director of the Environmental Leadership Program at Gettysburg College's Eisenhower Institute. The Eisenhower Institute is a non-partisan, public policy center focusing on undergraduate research. The research team consists of six undergraduate students who are taking part in a yearlong environmental leadership program. The research team will make use of their Cultural Diversity Rubric to evaluate the extent to which each cultural center represents the perspective of the diverse communities that have played significant roles in the maritime culture of the Eastern Shore. The rubric will also enable the research team to measure objectively the breadth of the stories depicted at museums (e.g., range of periods covered, range of experiences portrayed, and scope of the narratives). The final product of the research team will be a summative Coxcomb Chart (also known as a Florence Nightingale Chart) that assesses the diversity of cultural perspectives reflected at each cultural center.

The team's Cultural Diversity Rubric has the potential to help cultural centers identify blind spots and biases in the manner in which they tell the story of the Chesapeake Bay and the cultures the Bay supports. It also holds the potential to help museum planners as they strive to overcome social and cultural exclusion. The research topic is particularly timely, as the National Parks Service is moving forward with plans to include part of the Bay in the National Park system and will be looking for ways to tell a more complete story of the Bay.

Proposal:

Our research team proposes a presentation of our findings, either as members of a larger panel discussion or as a stand-alone workshop. We could meaningfully summarize the research process and findings of our study in a succinct 15- to 30-minute presentation. We ask that if our study is chosen for inclusion at the conference that we present on either March 8 or 9, as we will not be available on March 7^th. Our research team is self-funded and does not require travel assistance to participate in the conference. Thank you for considering our research findings at the National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program.