Living a Changed Life

By: 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 20^th 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.