Laura Schiavo

Bio

Professor Schiavo’s scholarship explores museum history, including the recent edited collection U.S. Museum Histories and the Politics of Interpretation: Never Neutral (2024) and “What To Do with Heritage: The Jewish Museum, 1931-1943,” Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism. She is also interested in contemporary museum practices and pedagogical approaches to curatorial practice. In 2026 she co-organized a mini-conference for the National Council on Public History, “Realizing the Power of History: Past, Present, and Future Strategies”, and in 2024 traveled to Germany as part of a project that brought together US and German public historians to consider public engagements with U.S. slavery and the European Holocaust. She is currently working on an article about the potential for multi-sensory, immersive exhibitions to develop historical awareness and engage audiences. Professor Schiavo has partnered with the National Park Service on various student research projects and on a national symposium, Co-Creating Narratives in Public Spaces (2014) and has spoken about her research at universities and museums including the Smithsonian Institution, the Capital Jewish Museum (Washington, DC), and Queens University, Belfast.  Before joining the Museum Studies faculty in 2009, Professor Schiavo, Ph.D. worked in museums in the DC area, including the City Museum, Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and the National Building Museum, where she curated Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s, among other exhibitions.  She holds a PhD in American Studies.

Current Research

• Professor Schiavo is currently working on an article about the potential for multi-sensory, immersive exhibitions to develop historical awareness and engage audiences.
• “What To Do with Heritage: The Jewish Museum, 1931-1943,” submitted as part of edited collection on the radical roots of public history. Under consideration by Amherst College Press
• Principal Investigator, Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystems Unit Task Agreement (cooperative agreement between the Department of the Interior/National Park Service and the George Washington University)
• Historic Furnishing Report, Mary McLeod Bethune National Council Historic Site
• Corcoran Faculty Research Group: Creativity and Social Action
• Teaching interests: history and theory of museums; museums and civic engagement; collections management and collections policy

Publications

• U.S. Museums and the Politics of Interpretation: Never Neutral. Laura Schiavo, ed. (Routledge, 2024)
• “As an adjunct to the Documents”: The Purpose and Politics of Nineteenth-Century History Collections” in U.S. Museums and the Politics of Interpretation: Never Neutral. Laura Schiavo, ed. (Routledge, forthcoming 2023)
• “What To Do with Heritage: The Jewish Museum, 1931-1943,” Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism. Denise Meringolo, ed. (Amherst College Press, 2021)
• “‘White People Like Hiking’: Some Implications of NPS Narratives of Relevance and Diversity.” Public Historian (November 2016): 206-235
• “It's Valuable to Challenge Claims of "Authenticity" (response to Ed Rothstein’s "The Problem with Jewish Museums") The Berman Jewish Policy Archive Stanford University Volume I. Issue I (March 1, 2016)
• “As an adjunct to the Documents”: The Purpose and Politics of Nineteenth-Century History Collections” in U.S. Museums and the Politics of Interpretation: Never Neutral. Laura Schiavo, ed. (Routledge, forthcoming 2023)

Classes Taught

Curatorial Research and Practice;  Exhibition Development

Professional Organizations

National Council on Public History

Education

Ph.D. American Studies, George Washington University (2003)
B.A. Wesleyan University (1991)

Professional Organizations

• National Council on Public History
• American Alliance of Museums