Dr. Cory Willmott
Title: Professor Emerita
Email: cwillmo@siue.edu
Degree : PhD McMaster University
Advising: Cultural Anthropology
Teaching Interests
At the introductory level, I enjoy teaching a Freshman Seminar on SIUE history and culture (ANTH 170-FR2). Students in this class have the opportunity to explore archival texts and photographs of SIUE's past, as well as SIUE's contemporary culture through interviews and digital photography. I also teach ANTH 205 Introduction to Native American Studies, the core course for a new minor housed in the anthropology department.
At the intermediate level, I teach one of our anthropology core courses, ANTH 301 Ethnographic Analysis, in which anthropology majors and minors learn how to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, as well as to polish their fieldwork report and ethnographic writing skills. I also teach courses on Native North Americans (Anth 305, Anth 312) and Asian peoples (Anth 306), as well as thematic courses such as Anth 304 Symbols and Culture and Anth 314 Family and Household, in which I employ ethnographies, oral traditions, films and artifacts in order to provide a hands-on learning environment. At the senior level, I concentrate on the Anthropology of Religion (Anth 410) and anthropological approaches to Museum Studies (Anth 404 Anthropology and the Arts; Anth 420 Museum Anthropology; Anth 435 American Material Culture). Anthropology Teaching Museum.
I am interested in supervising Senior Projects in a wide variety of areas including anything to do with arts and artifacts (a fancy word for "things") and/or images (moving or still) - from any area of the world including your own backyard (literally) - or from any angle including symbolic, economic, political, etc. Religion is another area of specialty. I will very happily mentor students in projects focusing on oral histories and/or narratives. I also enjoy supervising any and all projects relative to Native Americans past and present, as well as some themes related to China, India or Indonesia. I especially welcome projects that utilize museum collections and/or visual data, but there are few ethnographic enterprises that would fail to capture my interest.
As a member of the graduate faculty in connection with the Museum Studies Program, I am also interested in supervising graduate student research on any of the above mentioned topics.
Courses Taught
- ANTH 170b Introductory Topics in Anthropology
- ANTH 205 Introduction to Native American Studies
- ANTH 301 Ethnographic Analysis
- ANTH 304: Symbols and Culture
- ANTH 305: Peoples and Cultures of Native North America
- ANTH 312: Contemporary Native Americans
- ANTH/WMST 315: Family and Household in Cross-Cultural Perspective
- ANTH/MST 404: Anthropology of the Arts
- ANTH/RLST 410: Anthropology of Religion
- ANTH/MST 420: Museum Anthropology
- ANTH/MST 435: American Material Culture
- ANTH 483: Individual Study in Anthropology
- ANTH 490: Senior Assignment
- ANTH 491: Senior Project
- ANTH 586: Advanced Readings in Anthropology
Research Activities
I received a BA in Religious Studies from York University in Toronto, ON, Canada, followed by an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies - What's that? Anything you make it! I combined Religious Studies with Cultural Anthropology and Art History in my study of the spiritual aspects of Native women's arts. Among other things, during my fieldwork I studied (and eventually taught) beadwork and leatherwork among Native Americans in Toronto. I finally settled into Anthropology to undertake my Phd at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, Canada. At this point I took an historical turn in order to study the roles of clothing and textiles in the relations between Great Lakes Native peoples and colonizers from 1760 to the present. After I received my Phd in 2000, I was granted a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of History at University of Winnipeg. During this time I studied several projects including fur trade textiles and changing attitudes towards fur fashion in the 20th century.
You guessed it - I'm from Canada, eh?
Student Opportunities
Working in close association with the Friends of the Stephenson House, I am supervising a number of projects related to the development of Edwardsville's new historic site, the Benjamin Stephenson House, opposite the Dairy Queen on S. Buchanan. Stephenson was one of Edwardsville's earliest residents - the house was built in 1820 - and certainly one of its most wealthy at the time. The site is becoming a living history museum with costumed interpreters going about business and pleasure as was practiced in the 1820s. For any students who are looking for good Senior Project topics, there are many opportunities for interesting research projects to help the Friends present a first-rate historic site to the world.
There are always Senior Projects available for students who wish to create a museum exhibit. The department has several free-standing cases in the basement of Peck Hall that are ideally suited for this purpose, and just waiting for new exhibits. We also have one cabinet designed as "open storage" with numerous small drawers covered with plexiglass in order to display a large number of small artifacts. This would be ideal to show off our substantial prehistoric and/or New World lithic collection.
I also have a wide variety of research assistantship and museum internship opportunities available through the URCA Program and the Anthropology Teaching Museum.
Under my mentorship, museum internships may also be individually designed with museum professional from any museum. For a list of internship opportunities, click here Student Opportunities
To see some of the ongoing research projects open for student participation, check out the projects outlined above.
Segue Radio Show
- Click here to hear Dr. Aldemaro Romero interview Dr. Cory Willmott on "Trading Furs in the Great Lakes"
