Weekly Internship Blog Post #1

My name is Morgan Katsarelas and I am currently a senior in the online History B.A. program. After a ten-year hiatus from college, I transferred from Florida State University where I was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biology for four years. As a biology major I had an internship at the Tallahassee Museum with the animal care department - I loved educating the public and working in a museum setting. I have spent the last eight years studying sewing and historical costuming, which I now use occasionally to volunteer as a living history interpreter. My sewing experience led to my current employment as the Assistant Production Manager for a small luxury fashion house, but I find a sense of fulfillment in museum work and hope to use my degree to pursue a career in the museum field. My current internship at the Crowley Museum and Nature Center is an extension of the Service-Learning Project I completed at Crowley during the spring semester. Over the course of three weeks, I was able to help the museum begin identifying several of the artifacts in the collection that dates from 1816 to the 1960s, create placards for several artifacts, suggest new exhibits to showcase items in the existing collection, and act as a docent for visitors. Throughout the internship I hope to continue assisting with these projects while also gaining experience arranging exhibits and studying the way various kinds of interpretive signs can enhance the way visitors experience historic buildings. My areas of interest include but are not limited to exhibit design and the use of experiential learning in museum settings, the evolution of historical underpinnings in the 16th -early 20th centuries, Native American studies, and Florida history. In my study of historical costuming, the styles I am most fascinated by are wealthy class Victorian circa 1840-1899, wealthy class and middle class Edwardian circa 1900-1910, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian clothing in antiquity, the court attire of imperial Russia in the 19th century, French court attire in the 18th century, English court attire in the 16th century, and the wealthy class of the Italian Renaissance.