Michelle Charest
Areas of Interest: Topical Interests: historical archaeology; anthropological approaches to food and drink; material culture; diaspora studies; cultural identity maintenance and social cohesion; community studies; public/communal spaces; historical geography/landscape studies; ethnicity; comparative historical immigration studies; consumption and consumerism, public humanities and museum studies, GIS and Digital Archaeologies. Temporal Interests: 19th century. Geographic Interests: Ireland, North American Intermountain West, North American Atlantic coast, U.K.
Dissertation Research: As part of the great wave of Irish immigration to the United States in the mid-19th century, many journeyed to the American mining West, establishing themselves in the boomtown of Virginia City, Nevada. In addition to participating in the wider Nevada community, these Irish immigrants also continued to proudly identify with their distant homeland – as Americans but also as Irishmen and Irishwomen. The unique, but familiar, commensal-communal space of the Irish saloon provided dual opportunities for these immigrants by engendering the development and maintenance of a tangible Irish-identified community as well as providing a safe space in which to embrace new American identities. This research is focused around the archaeological excavations of four saloons in Virginia City, NV, and is centered on the excavation of an Irish saloon named The Hibernia Brewery, with comparative data derived from Irish archival sources. In examining this burgeoning late 19th century Irish saloon community in the West, this research is further theoretically engaged with anthropological approaches to the commensal consumption of food and drink, social spaces, consumerism and identity theory, and studies of diaspora and nostalgia, as a basis for understanding the Irish community experience.
Status: Post field
MA Research: Faded Receipts and Buried Walls: A Historical Archaeological Investigation of the Material Culture and Identity of the Cooper Family of Riverstown, County Sligo, Ireland . Illinois State University, 2005. Examines the means by which a rural middling elite Anglo-Protestant family expressed and maintained their identity in the face of the socially and politically inconstant world of 18th and 19th century Ireland.
Previous Degrees: MA, Illinois State University; BA, Boston University
Contact Information: Michelle_Charest@brown.edu
Homepage: http://proteus.brown.edu/charest/2430