SIUE History PhD Student Earns Multiple Fellowships for Dissertation Research
Shannan Mason, PhD student in the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) Department of Historical Sciences, has always had a passion for gardening. Her interest in a Philadelphia native who generated a burgeoning trans-Atlantic 18th-century horticultural exchange by the name of John Bartram sparked while visiting family near Philadelphia. After having studied all things horticulture the summer before, she came fascinated by Bartram and his activities surrounding horticulture and trading. This led to the decision on her dissertation research.
Last month she was awarded the François André Michaux Fund Fellowship at the American Philosophical Society (APS) Library and Museum in Philadelphia. This four-week residential fellowship will allow her to be immersed in the APS’s large collection of Bartram’s letters and research where Mason will have the opportunity to intensely study her own personal theory on his behaviors.
“My argument is that Bartram is a merchant of nature,” said Mason. “This is a big change from the more widely accepted interpretation that he is a sentimental collector exchanging because he was a nature-centric Quaker. I’m pushing against those sentimental interpretations and saying, actually, he was a scientist and a merchant. He was doing these things to foster a sense of intellectualism in conjunction with earning money. I want to see how his material surroundings inside the Philadelphia area influenced his business, if there is a connection. And even if there isn’t a direct connection between his material surroundings and his exchange, I think it would be nice to paint this picture of what exactly nature looked like in material depictions in Philadelphia.”
Mason earned her Bachelor of Science in historical studies in 2011 and her Master of Arts in historical studies as well as a certification in museum studies in 2014 from SIUE. During that time, she served as a teaching assistant with SIUE, and is now an adjunct faculty member and lecturer at Lincoln Land Community College and SIUE, respectively, teaching several courses in US History. She currently works as the team leader in archival research at the Madison Historical Digital Research and Archives, where she leads a team of undergraduate research assistants. Next summer, Mason will participate in the Winterthur Research Fellowship at the University of Delaware, where she’ll be able to further her dissertation research.
“The Winterthur has a massive book collection and objects from Philadelphia. One of the things I want to study is the connection of material culture and nature depicted inside of material culture in Bartram’s surrounding area. Because the Winterthur focuses on these kinds of material things, like tapestries, needle point samplers and other nature-centric objects that were owned by people that he is known to have traded and sold and consulted with, I can really look at and research Bartram’s immediate cultural material surroundings.”
No stranger to recognition, Mason recently received two other awards: the Weiss History Award from SIUE’s College of Arts and Sciences for best graduate student research paper for her work titled “Greenspace as Cultural Capital: The Translation of the Medici Family Gardens from Utilitarian to Artistic Space,” and the Lynn and Kristen Morrow Missouri History Award presented by the Missouri Humanities for the presentation of her paper, “Nature Much Improved: The Curation of a Nineteenth-Century St. Louis Neighborhood” at the 62nd Annual Missouri Conference on History. The paper will also be published in Lindenwood University’s regional studies journal The Confluence this winter.
Photo: Shannan Mason, SIUE historical studies PhD student
