Please complete the application form.

The application process:

1. Completed application form

2. Resume or C.V. (1-4 pages)

3. Application Essay (2-4 pages) should address the following questions:

• What are your personal and academic interests, and how do they relate to the Munson Institute’s topic and themes?
• What qualifications, experiences, and/or knowledge will you bring to the Munson Institute?
• What specific collections at Mystic Seaport Museum—or nearby institutions—are you interested in exploring during the Munson Institute?
• How will participating in the Munson Institute further your personal, academic, or professional goals?

4. Contact information for two references who are familiar with the applicant’s accomplishments or promise.

Graduate students and advanced undergraduate students are encouraged to apply.

The application deadline is March 14, 2025.

Collections  

The collections at Mystic Seaport Museum reflect the extraordinary scope and significance of America’s relationship with the sea and inland waterways. Housed in the Collections Research Center, the materials represent a wide variety of resources from manuscripts to fine art.

G. W. Blunt White Library  

The library is part of the Collections and Research Center at Mystic Seaport Museum where most of the Museum’s holdings are housed. The research collection of the G. W. Blunt White Library is one of the most significant in the nation with over 70,000 volumes of books and periodicals, 2,000 rolls of microfilm, 1,000 ships registers, 1,000,000 manuscript pieces, 800 oral or video taped interviews, and 9,000 maps and charts.

Manuscripts

The 1,000,000 manuscript pieces include logbooks, journals, letters, diaries, business records, i.e. receipts, bills of lading, and Charter Parties, as well as government documents among other items. They can inform layers of study regarding all aspect of the maritime past.

Objects  

The Museum’s collection is vast and touches on nearly all aspects of the seafaring experience. Examples of materials in the collections include scrimshaw, ship’s portraits, ship models, half models, navigational instruments, fishing and whaling gear, clothing and other textiles, furniture, tools, period engines, and much more.

Within the CRC building a researcher can also have access to 550 historic vessels, 100,000 sheets of ships’ plans, 1,000,000 feet of film and video, another 1,000,000 photograph images, and many of the 1,000,000 objects in the Museum’s collection.

Munson Institute classes coordinate with the hours of operation with this unique maritime resource.

The Outdoor Museum 

Most visitors to Mystic never see the collection storage areas or the library. They typically visit the outdoor museum with its 19 acres, 60 buildings, numerous vessels afloat in the river, formal viewing galleries and one-of-a-kind Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard. These objects and their setting can be valuable research tools for the advanced scholar as well. Climbing aloft on a square-rigger, rowing a whaleboat, and chatting with a skilled blacksmith can offer a level of understanding that only the direct contact with objects of the past being put to use can provide.

Students enrolled in the Munson Institute are allowed full access to these historical objects and skilled personnel.

LEARN MORE

Each week, the Munson Institute travels to coastal communities across Southern New England to explore cultural institutions, speak with field experts, and engage in experiential exploration and discussion.

Past Munson Institute Field Seminar Locations have included the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Pequot Fort Site, Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, NY, New London, CT, New Bedford, MA, Newport, RI, New Haven, CT, and more.

The Town

Mystic, Connecticut, a picturesque community of nearly 10,000 residents, is a destination for tourists, history buffs, boaters, and coastal enthusiasts. As such it has a lively social scene during summer months when a brief walk to the downtown with its classic bascule drawbridge and many watering holes and eateries can offer a pleasant break from academics.

The name “Mystic” was derived from the Algonquian word Missituk, meaning great tidal river. This area was likely explored for the first time by Europeans in the 1600s by Captain Adrian Block, and settled by the English in 1654.

Mystic became a shipbuilding center for the whaling and fishing industries by the early 19th century. One Mystic-built ship of note, the 47-foot sloop Hero, carried Stonington native Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer to his discovery of Antarctica in 1820.

Shipbuilding in Mystic continued through whaling and sealing days, and during the California Gold Rush, when the Mystic yards launched numerous ships, including the famed clipper ship David Crockett, whose average speed around Cape Horn to San Francisco was never equaled.

During the Civil War, shipbuilding efforts in Mystic peaked. Mystic produced a greater tonnage of ships than any other port of her size in the US. However, after the war, shipbuilding in Mystic dwindled, and the boatyards were replaced with woolen mills. Other factories local to Mystic produced velvet, soap, and razors. By the early 20th century small boatyards embodied the legacy of Mystic’s glory days.

Mystic Seaport Museum 

Among the visitors to the Museum every fall and spring is a small group of undergraduate students who have chosen to spend a semester of their college education at Mystic Seaport Museum to study the sea with the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Program in Maritime Studies. This is the only undergraduate residential program at a Museum in the United States, and was inspired by the Munson Institute itself.

Housing

Each summer, Munson participants live in one of four historic houses adjacent to Mystic Seaport Museum and the Mystic River. These 19th-century homes, where shipbuilders, mill workers and fishermen once lived, are equipped with high-speed internet connections, microwaves, furnishings, air-conditioning, and the comforts of a modern home. Rooms are either singles or doubles, while all other spaces in the house are shared in a cooperative approach to summer living. The Williams-Mystic students use these houses during the fall and spring, and summer-time neighbors could include museum studies interns and marine science researchers.

Local Attractions

The Mystic region is rich in cultural and natural attractions. Minutes away from Mystic Seaport Museum is the Mystic Aquarium with its belugas, dolphins, touch tanks and more, as well as the Coogan Farm Nature & Heritage Center, with more than 10 miles of hiking trails. Downtown Mystic is a picturesque destination in its own right with shops, restaurants, riverside park and historic drawbridge. In nearby Groton one can find the USS Nautilus on display at the Submarine Force Museum next the active submarine base. Across the river, New London has a working waterfront, a transportation hub, museums, historic homes, Connecticut College, and the US Coast Guard Academy. Twenty minutes in the other direction brings you to the open ocean beaches of Rhode Island. Hartford, New Haven, and Providence are within an hour’s drive, and Boston and New York City are within two-three hours.

Opportunities through the Munson Institute

Applicants for 2025 Munson Institute with specific research and writing projects are encouraged to apply for the Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship for additional funding of up to $2,400. Born in 1759 of African American and Native American parents, Paul Cuffe became a sea captain, shipowner, landowner, and respected community leader.  Since 1989, the Museum’s Paul Cuffe Fellowship has provided funds to researchers from universities, colleges, and museums. The Fellowships are offered to encourage research that considers the participation of Native and African Americans in the nation’s maritime activities. Fellowships support research and writing, a portion of which should normally be carried out in the Mystic area. Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellows have two options:

• In addition to Munson Fellowship, Cuffe Memorial Fellows build their research and writing into five weeks of residence and participate in University of Connecticut summer graduate courses held at the Museum’s Munson Institute. 

• Stand-alone Cuffe Memorial Fellowship: supports research and writing, a portion of which should normally be carried out in the Mystic area. Please visit the Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship to apply.

The awards of up to $2,400 are made possible through the generosity of a local private foundation. If applying for the Cuffe Memorial Fellowship in addition to Munson Institute, please include Munson application materials, along with a full description of the proposed project, a preliminary bibliography, and brief project budget to be considered for this award. Fellowship recipients will be required to file a report on their research activities.

Journals for Publication

Munson Institute faculty also serve on the editorial boards of the several peer-reviewed journals that deal with maritime history and culture. Cuffe Fellows, Munson graduates, and researchers are encouraged to submit their final products to Mainsheet, The Northern Mariner, or The Nautilus.

Conferences and Symposia

Munson Fellows are invited to share their ongoing research at conferences and symposia organized by the American Institute of Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport Museum.

Co-Director Michael P. Dyer, M.A., Curator of Maritime History, is the Museum’s lead specialist in whaling and maritime history and related collections resources. He has over thirty years of experience as a maritime history curator and librarian at the Kendall Whaling Museum, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and now at Mystic Seaport Museum. He has been either lead or co-curator of twelve exhibitions, written three books on maritime history and arts, as well as many scholarly articles, book chapters, etc., and is the award-winning author of the book O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea: Original Art of the Yankee Whale Hunt, (New Bedford, 2017).

Co-Director Dr. Elysa Engelman, Director of Research and Scholarship, guides scholarly initiatives at Mystic Seaport Museum and furthers the work of AIMS as a center for research and learning. She develops and stewards academic partnerships that support both visiting and internal scholars at all levels, connecting them with resources and knowledge that further work in maritime and museum studies. She has previously served as the Director of Exhibits and as a lead on strategic Museum initiatives including the Reimagining New England Histories project, the programming for the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, and dozens of exhibitions.

Instructor and former Director, Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, Director of the Center for Black History, Newport Historical Society, is a scholar and public humanist leading the development of a flagship center for Black history in Newport, Rhode Island. She is an adjunct professor with the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and served as the first William E. Cook Vice President of the American Institute of Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport Museum. She was the lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport Museum exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea, a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that reimagines the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Indigenous, African, and African American maritime narratives, centering ancestral and descendant voices.