Dear fort followers,
Who among us can say that the global pandemic has not had an impact on their lives? Many became isolated, lost jobs, and cancelled life-affirming events; some have gotten sick and even died. By those measures, my life has been relatively serene, though there have been unanticipated changes. When international travel was suspended in May, I cancelled my trip to Spain where I was scheduled for a three-city book tour to promote
Fort St. Joseph Revealed, the recently released edited volume summarizing 20 years of research at our beloved fort. About the same time, it became apparent that social distancing and closures in Niles (e.g., YMCA, Niles District Library) would make it impossible for us to hold the 45th annual WMU archaeological field school at Fort St. Joseph. That also meant no summer camps, no lecture series, and no archaeology open house. In lieu of the field school I offered a course on “
The Ethnoarchaeology of COVID-19” (ANTH 4970) to give students an experiential learning opportunity to apply archaeological and ethnographic methods to a contemporary phenomenon.
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Michael teaching the 2015 WMU field school
students about Fort St. Joseph and its stakeholders. |
While I enjoyed distance learning with this small class of seven students, I could not envision how I would uphold my teaching standards with three classes totaling more than 150 students in the fall. When WMU offered senior faculty members a voluntary early retirement option, I accepted it and was granted emeritus status, effective September 1, 2020. I have since met with WMU administrators who still have a strong interest in the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. They invited me to stay involved with the Project and assist in planning, maintaining, and promoting the current partnership with the City of Niles. What form this will take remains up to the partners. I know the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Advisory Committee will be making a recommendation to sustain the Project for the future.
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While in-person lectures and conferences, like the one pictured
above, may be on hold right now, Michael continues to discuss
his work virtually to colleagues and members of the public.
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I also hope to remain connected to the University and keep honing my anthropological and historical interests in various ways. I will be presenting a number of virtual lectures and webinars over the next several months. I edit
Le Journal for the Center for French Colonial Studies; chair the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission; and edit the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective series (University Press of Florida), now with a co-editor. I will also be assisting WMU in managing the archaeological collections recovered by my colleagues that consist of over 400 boxes of artifacts, samples, field notes, maps, and photographs. To do so I will supervise students to organize these materials, establish their ownership, and arrange to transfer them to a permanent repository since they are no longer in active use yet remain a priceless resource.
I continue to chair and serve on graduate student honor’s thesis, M.A. thesis, and doctoral dissertation committees. I am also maintaining my relationships with the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi to assist WMU in reaching out to Native peoples in the region to enhance collaborative efforts to promote Native scholarship among faculty, students, and members of the community.
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The FSJAP lab space at WMU provides a space for faculty and
students to preform research on artifacts recovered from the site. |
WMU has allowed me to keep my current office (1014 Moore) and lab space in Moore Hall for the foreseeable future as I complete some my current projects; orient new faculty, staff, and students who take an interest in these activities; and sort through the detritus of nearly three decades of research, teaching, and service activities.
As you might guess, the pandemic has had a silver lining. In addition to providing me considerable time for writing, editing, and reviewing, I have been able to reassess some of my personal and professional goals. Just as the shutdown occurred (March), my wife, Nadine, and I put our Kalamazoo house up for sale. When relators resumed showings in May, we received an offer the very first day and we closed five weeks later. We moved permanently to lovely South Haven on June 6. In some ways, I don’t see retirement so differently from my life before September 1, perhaps because I loved my academic
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| Michael at Fort Michilimackinac in 2009. |
position and the opportunities it afforded me. As I quipped to someone recently who tried to describe my new status (ex-professor?), “once a professor, always a professor.” Indeed, some of our new neighbors in Miami Park have taken to refer to me as “the professor,” a title I proudly own.
I hope to see you at a future event virtually and maybe even face-to-face someday soon. I miss the mud of the St. Joseph River floodplain, students’ excitement of their first find, the throngs of attendees at the open house, and the warmth of the Niles people who have welcomed me into their hearts and homes since I first began to search for the fort in 1998. I am so fortunate to have been invited to join you in building one of the best public archaeology projects in the world. My thanks go out to all of you who played a part in this adventure, however small. I am forever in your debt.
Sincerely,
Michael S. Nassaney
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Western Michigan University
Principal Investigator, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project
