Aaron M. Noble

About Me:

I graduated from Union College with a B.A. in History in 2002. In 2004, I received my Master of Arts degree from SUNY Albany in Public History. Shortly after graduation, I was hired as a Historical Collections Analyst for the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia.

In 2007, I was hired by the New York State Museum as a Research and Collections Technician as part of a Save America's Treasures Grant to help preserve and document the State Museum's extensive World Trade Center collections. By 2012, I was promoted to Associate Museum Exhibition Planner within the museum's exhibits department. In 2014, I returned to the history department as Senior Historian for Political, Military, and Governmental History.

My areas of research and collection primarily focus on the political, governmental, and military history of New York State and its citizenry, and how that history impacts the broader historical narrative. Recently, much of my research was concentrated on the World War I era as the museum prepares to commemorate the centennial anniversary of America’s entry into the conflict in 2017. This research examines the pivotal role that New Yorkers played in all facets of the conflict – as soldiers, in industry, charity and civic participation. Rather than rehashing a blow-by-blow history of the battles of the Great War, A Spirit of Sacrifice: New York State in the First World War focused on those individual New Yorkers from all across the state, from a variety of racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, and interpreting their wartime experiences to the public. This study emphasized that New York, as one of the most populous, industrialized, and wealthy states in the nation in 1917, played a crucial role in the American war effort, and that the legacy of this participation resonates to the present day.

Currently, I am working on a variety of projects to include a major exhibition on the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising, a re-envisioning of the State Museum's Holocaust exhibit, Bitter Hope, and researching the museum's collections efforts in the wake of September 11, 2001, as part of my dissertation project and potentially as a larger monograph.

I returned to SUNY Albany in 2018 in pursuit of my doctoral degree. In just over one year of study, I have already been pleasantly surprised with the rapid growth of my professional abilities and insights that have been afforded by the reintroduction to academic courses of study. I am very interested in the Practicum on Digital History and its potential applications for my work at the State Museum.