Living a Changed Life

By: Corinne Zaczek Bermon, Historian and Archivist in the Making

FullSizeRender
Corinne Zaczek Bermon Historian and Archivist in the Making

 

It was natural for me to fall into the wine business after growing up amongst the vines in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. I paid my way through college by standing behind a bar and loved to talk about wine regions, wine varietals and food pairings. Between my bar experience and being trained as a sommelier, it was certainly an easy transition to marketing and public relations for a local company after I graduated with an American Studies BA from UMass Boston. I spent my days tasting wine, writing about it, designing newsletters and advertisements, and blogging. Knowing my privilege as a good wine writer and an expert in the field, I happily traveled around the globe interviewing winemakers and having private tastings in their cellars while freelancing for magazines on the side. While I loved the world that I was in, I knew something was missing. I came to realize that I concentrated more on the history of wine and wineries when I researched and wrote and less about selling the wine to would be buyers.

That was when I knew it was time for a change.

When I graduated from UMass Boston, I left with an overwhelming feeling that I had not had enough. I registered and graduated in 3 semesters with all the transfer credits I had accrued. American Studies intrigued me because it combined my love of American history while looking at aspects that are left out of the master narrative such as race, class and gender. It struck me that I was not done with American Studies and I made the decision to apply to the graduate program.

So now I spend my days studying early 20th century history’s intersections of gender and class and urban history. I am currently working on my thesis for graduation entitled “The Activist Gardener: Rose Standish Nichols in the National and International Movement of Peace, 1915-1945.” Focusing on one Boston woman’s work, Rose Standish Nichols, I will bring to light the national and international networks women formed in the peace movement while bringing Nichols back into her rightful place in history as a founder of the long-standing Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, while continuing her career as a world-renown landscape architect.

While starting my second year of grad school, I found a second love: archival studies.  Archiving represents for me the practical use of my knowledge in history.  It’s hands on and always moving forward with the use of digital tools. For my digital project on the history of Boston desegregation, I hoped to be able to bring an interactive mapping tool that would give this project a sense of place and bring the different neighborhoods affected by bussing into focus for non-Bostonians and Bostonians alike.

I only drink wine now for pleasure and not my job. I still accept some freelance jobs because, let’s face it, graduate students need money and freelancing pays.

Bio of a History Grad Student in Public History

Bio of a History Grad Student in Public History

By: Lauren A. Prescott

Lauren Prescott, November 2014 trip to Washington D.C.
Lauren Prescott, November 2014 trip to Washington D.C.

I grew up an hour south of Boston in New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford was a major whaling and trading port in the 19th century and the home of abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass more many years. The history of my city greatly interested me and I was lucky enough to spend many afternoons at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in their summer program. As a child I found my history classes boring, but field trips to museums and historic sites were some of my fondest memories of school. Unfortunately, my history classes were lacking, and we were nothing more than date-memorizing machines for exams.

I entered UMass Amherst in the fall of 2008 as a math major. I had no interest in math, but I had always excelled in those classes. Although I loved history and would often be found immersed in a history book, I did not see a future career in the discipline (other than teaching). I disliked most of my classes, but remained as a math major for two years. At the time, I was working at the Science & Engineering Library on campus and had befriended many people in other disciplines. One person I became particularly close with was a history major and it was through him that I saw the career possibilities in history. Why stick with something that I had no passion for? Why spend all four years of my undergraduate career feeling unfulfilled? It was then that I made the decision to become a history major and took extra courses each semester to finish on time. Those two years were some of my hardest, as I still worked full time, but they were also the most interesting.

In my last year at UMass Amherst, I came across an introductory course to public history. At the time I had no idea what public history was, and simply took it for course credit. That introductory course and Professor Marla Miller opened my eyes to the career possibilities of a public historian. I immediately began looking at graduate schools that offered public history programs and came upon UMass Boston. So what is public history? Public history refers to the work that is done outside the academy, especially in regards to recreating and presenting history to the public. Public historians can be found as archivists, museum curators, historical preservationists and writers. My specific interests lay in childhood education. Public schools across the country have had problems with their history curriculum, and many students (like I did) do not find their history classes interesting or beneficial outside of school. Thankfully, the classroom isn’t the only place for kids to learn! Museums in Boston offer after school and summer programs for students of all ages. This type of interactive learning can make history meaningful and that is what I hope to do after graduation – to present history in a way that makes it meaningful for people, particularly children.

I am now in my second year as a graduate student and hope to finish my degree in the spring of 2016. I recently finished an internship with Mount Auburn Cemetery in December which I greatly enjoyed. For the internship I researched 19th century women activists interred at the cemetery for an upcoming web exhibit on Mount Auburn’s website. I wrote all of the text and acquired all of the visuals (photographs, documents, newspaper articles) for the exhibit. I spent a lot of my time doing research at various archives in the Boston area, especially at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library. The time I spent in the archives this past year gave me a great appreciation for archivists and I wanted to learn more about the profession, which led me to Professor Marilyn Morgan’s digital archives class this semester.

I am also beginning an internship this semester with the Arlington Historical Society in the collections management department. The internship will give me hands on experience working with their collection of over 4,000 objects. My previous internships focused solely on research and my internship at AHS will allow me to learn more about collections care and management, while also learning to use collection management software.

This semester the class will look at the desegregation of Boston schools in the 1970s–1980s and create a digital archive highlighting items found in archives across the city. I am specifically interested in the students’ perspectives. Desegregation of Boston schools was covered in the media for years, and it frequently focused on the opposition to forced busing, parents who refused to send their children to school, and the violence that erupted across the city. But what about the students? How did they feel about school desegregation? How was their day at school impacted? Did the violence stop once the students stepped inside the schools? Were they able to create new friendships, or was there really all of this hostility? There was much more to students’ daily lives than what was portrayed in the media and I hope to bring their stories to light.

Call in your best players Boston, the bleachers are full.

“Call in Your Best Players Boston, the Bleachers Are Full: An International and Domestic Response to Boston Busing directed at Mayor Kevin White”

By: Caitlin Pinkham, graduate student in History

Since its foundation, Boston recognized itself as a “city upon a hill.” A city that fought against the crown, the first to have an underground subway system and  provide a home to activists and political progressives abound.  In various moments of history, Boston became the beacon providing insight into new political understandings and transformations. As the buses began to roll to combat segregation, Boston once again found itself in the national spotlight.

Sitting on the bleachers, countries and states watched Boston deploy players and officials to uphold a decision for the desegregation of schools made by Judge in 1974. As controversy and violence quickly arose in city neighborhoods, countries and states chimed in with their opinions on exactly what Boston should do to combat discrimination. Yelling from the bleachers, theses spectators brought their own perspectives and opinions into the city.

Through letters sent personally to Boston’s Mayor Kevin White and newspapers with editorials from different states and countries. I hope this archive will begin to shed light on how the situation in Boston grew from a citywide dilemma to an international issue. The mayor received letters from countries as far away as Australia (see below for aerogramme from R.M. Lewis in Sydney, Australia) and as close to the border as Mexico. Various states provided their perspectives to Boston as well. Everyone had an opinion about the correct maneuver that would outsmart discrimination. These letters will surely demonstrate various opinions and once again solidify Boston’s position as a “city upon a hill.”

Australia letter
Front page of letter from R.M. Lewis (Sydney Australia) to Kevin White. Courtesy of Boston City Archives, Boston MA.
Australia letter2
verso of letter from R.M. Lewis (Sydney Australia) to Kevin White. Courtesy of Boston City Archives, Boston MA.