Four members of the Syracuse University community have been selected by the New York Council for the Humanities for its New York Public Scholars program.
Public scholars will travel around New York State for two years, giving presentations and leading public engagement workshops related to their individual research and/or issues of community concern.
Those selected are Anne E. Mosher, associate professor of geography from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences; Sally Roesch Wagner, adjunct professor in the Renée Crown University Honors Program; Debora Ryan, Ph.D. candidate in cultural foundations of education in the School of Education; and alumna Freida Jacques ’80, who graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences.
“The public scholars combine a depth of expertise with a deep commitment to community dialogue and education,” said Sara Ogger, executive director of the New York Council for the Humanities. “The program is at the forefront of a growing public humanities movement.”
Debora Ryan
Debora Ryan has been working in the museum field for more than 20 years, most recently as senior curator at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse from 2003-2013. During this time, she curated more than 100 exhibitions, including “The Other New York: 2012 (TONY: 2012),” a 14-venue, community-wide collaborative exhibition and catalog featuring 55 artists from upstate New York, and authored numerous museum publications. An active member of the local and regional arts community, Ryan routinely juries exhibitions, participates in panel discussions and has served as a peer reviewer for the New York State Council on the Arts’ Museum Grants Program.
She holds a B.A. in studio art and photography from Nazareth College, in Rochester, N.Y, and an M.A. in art history from Syracuse University, where she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in cultural foundations in education. Her research interests include the history of museums and museums as sites of public memory. Her dissertation examines the history of Sainte Marie among the Iroquois Living History Museum, a modern replica of a 17th century Jesuit Mission located in Liverpool, N.Y., that is currently being re-purposed as a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) educational center called Skä•noñh, The Great Law of Peace Center.
Ryan presented at the 2014 Indigenous Perspectives on Museums Symposium at Syracuse University, and the “Local People: Exploring Identity, Economy, and Place” Graduate Student History Conference in 2015. She will also be presenting at the History of Education Society annual meeting in St. Louis this fall. Ryan has taught courses in the history of photography, history of design and museum studies at Syracuse. She is a part-time faculty member in the Museum Studies department at Wells College, Aurora, N.Y.
Her Public Scholars presentation is “Our Museums/Our Memories.”