SCOTTVILLE - Dr. John P. Thorp will be presenting a lecture in support of “Them: Images of Separation,” an exhibit from Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum and on display in West Shore Community College’s Manierre Dawson Gallery until Feb. 17. The event will take place on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 11 a.m., in the College’s Center Stage Theater.
This event was originally scheduled for mid-January and postponed due to inclement weather.
Thorp will reflect on his 16 years of experience at the Jim Crow Museum where he assisted in the creation of the museum, served as its director, facilitated tours, and trained faculty in the use of the museum.
Thorp, who spent 30 years in higher education before his retirement from FSU in 2008, was the social sciences department head for 18 years which included directing the museum from its very beginning. He spent his last year at Ferris as the full-time museum director and helped design a new museum facility which is scheduled to open early in April 2012.
“The exhibit, encapsulates a very unfortunate pattern of behavior in American culture; widespread negative stereotyping to demean and diminish people who are different than the person doing the stereotyping,” says Thorp. “Race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class are all used to divide our society into competing groups of people. Commonplace everyday objects of all kinds give expression to our divisive ideas about the people around us.”
Thorp received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 1964, a Master of Arts degree in theology from Holy Cross College in Washington, DC in 1968. He also received a Master of Arts degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1973, for a linguistic study of Tagalog, one of the languages of the Philippines. He received his Ph.D. in 1978, for his study of the conjunction of religion and politics in the organization of rural villages in Bangladesh.
He has also done research on the effects of multinational agribusiness during an ethnographic study of a pineapple plantation on the island of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines, and on the effects of the multinational pharmaceutical industry in rural Kenya.
His wife grew up in Ludington and graduated with the class of 1960. Her family remained here, and Thorp and she summered here with their three daughters until his retirement, when they moved to the area permanently. They now reside on Hamlin Lake.
He is currently the Vice-President of the Mason Country Historical Society and involved in the development of The Port of Ludington Maritime Museum in the old Coast Guard Station.
Admission to the Manierre Dawson Gallery is free. The Gallery, located in the Arts and Sciences Center, is open 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
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