chelsea miller, new york coalition against sexual assault
Proposal Type
Workshop
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
- Reflections on the Field
- Sexual Harassment and Gender Discrimination
Abstract
The #MeToo movement has shed light on the widespread prevalence of sexual violence, including in scholarly and professional communities. This 90-minute training will showcase successful models for preventing and responding to sexual harassment in museums and historical sites and equip public history leadership—including directors, senior staff/faculty, and administrators—with the tools and skills to effectively prevent and respond to sexual violence in their institutions.
Description
“During the 2019 and 2020 NCPH annual meetings, Chelsea Miller (New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault) and Michelle Carroll (consultant) co-facilitated bystander intervention workshops for public history and museum professionals. These workshops provided information about sexual violence, how to support survivors, and how to intervene and prevent sexual violence. The workshops also prompted discussions about how museums and historic sites can prevent sexual harassment in their institutions, raising questions about the role of leadership and administrators in implementing policies and procedures that effectively prevent and respond to sexual violence.
We are seeking additional presenters working in institutions who have successfully implemented sexual harassment policies and grievance procedures, or who have otherwise engaged in practices to prevent and respond to sexual violence within their institutions—or within the field at large.
We are also seeking feedback from interested participants in the form of questions. What questions do you have for workshop facilitators/presenters? Did you participate in the bystander intervention workshops and have questions/concerns that the workshops prompted?”
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Chelsea Miller, New York Coalition Against Sexual Assault, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 6, 2020. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
This may be too far afield for this particular panel, but I’m curious how historic sites and museums create a culture or institutional language around interpreting historic sexual violence that may have happened at their site. Does having a rubric for interpreting these traumatic historic stories mean that sites are more equipped to implement policies and navigate grievances in the current moment? Or are those two things unrelated? Do historic sites generally avoid discussions of sexual violence from the past so as not to upset their visitors or staff?
I love this set of questions in light of the proposed workshop. The intersection between interpretive practices and policies to protect employees seems like it could generate some significant insights regarding how to align what happens behind the scenes with ‘front of the house.”
I have seen the executive office of the Western History Association work on these questions over the past several years. It’s not just institutions, but also associations that have had to make decisions about this. See WHA CARES for more information – https://westernhistoryassociation.wildapricot.org/WHA-Cares.
This workshop sounds like an ideal space for public historians to consider the complexities of confronting sexual harassment and gender discrimination. I think that your focus on harm reduction provides an important counterpoint to some other approaches.