Public History Student – Page 2 – Public History at UMass Boston

December 16, 2020Heidi Gengenbach 1 Comment

Internship: Cold War Cassin Young

By Charles Borsos

Standing on the stern of Cassin Young, trying to remember the specifications and history of the specific equipment installed behind me, my teeth were chattering. Park Ranger and internship supervisor Eric Hanson Plass and I spent the morning filming all around the ship which was closed for the winter. This gave us free reign to set up our camera without fear of getting in anyone’s way. It also meant we could step over the signs marked “closed to the public” without a curious visitor trying to follow and take the camera into the spaces normally unseen.

Still image from video shot by Eric Hanson Plass, of intern Charlie Borsos at the stern of Cassin Young in Charlestown, Dec 2, 2020

Closing for the winter meant it was cold on the ship. Not just the wind coming off the harbor but the bare steel of the ship itself was cold and sucked the heat off any part of the body idly leaning against it. It reminded me of the crewmen’s firsthand accounts of serving on the ship, and their gratitude for the simple installation of tile in particular spaces in the 1950s.

“It really made a big difference because when you got up in the morning, and slapped your flat feet out on that cold, clammy, wet steel deck in the morning, you couldn’t hardly stand up because of the condensation from everybody breathing,” said yeoman Theodore G. Johndrow, one of the last crewmen to leave the ship in 1960, interviewed in 1983. Combining interviews like these with the interpretation of the spaces within Cassin Young, allows visitors to understand the experience of the destroyer’s “being cold” instead of a simple fact.

In many ways, our winter film shoot capped hours of my research on the process of adapting a ship built to fight WWII for continued service during the much changed circumstances of the Cold War. The video, along with text, oral history excerpts and photographs, will complete the final section—“Modernizing the Fleet”—of the National Park Service’s web application, Ship of Steel, Spirits of Iron: The Stories of USS Cassin Young and the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Intern Charlie Borsos in front of “hedgehog launcher” on *Cassin Young*, Dec 2, 2020.

Because of the pandemic, I have conducted most of my research online, and indeed, the final product will be virtual. We shot the film during my second visit to the ship, which I had come to know intimately on paper, but not in real life. Despite this “remoteness,” my goal is to connect the history and the stories to the site; the opportunity to film on-site, after months of remote research and writing, has given clarity to some of the developing themes.

The documentary evidence, for example, revealed that the barbershop was the segregated quarters on the ship during the war. These destroyers were designed in the 1930s when the Navy and indeed much of the United States was segregated, and the predominantly Black and Filipino sailors of color who served on board Navy ships were relegated to serving as stewards’ mates and cooks. Experiencing the physical space onboard Cassin Young reveals that this space for their berthing, away from the main space for the white crew, is accessed from the white crew’s berthing by going through the chow line and up a set of stairs physically removed from the rest of the crew and stuck in another compartment. It reinforces within the very structure of the ship the racial separation within the Navy during WWII.

This process of thinking about the history as tied to space on Cassin Young, and also considering those spaces as areas where men worked and lived are crucial interpretive lessons that shape my continued work on text and voice overs for the video. The new equipment used to search for enemy submarines in the 1950s were not just vacuum tubes capable of hearing a certain level of decibel from a certain range. The experience of the man stationed at a radar scope in the middle of the night as Cassin Young made its way across the Atlantic on a goodwill visit to the Mediterranean attaches layers of meanings to this technology. These technologies don’t live on their own, they are part of a ship and the lives of the ship’s crew; what can seem like minutiae can be woven into a richer fabric strongly attached to the interpretive site.

USN Escort Ship fires similar weapon, Dec 18, 1944, Court. USN

December 3, 2020Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Internship – After the Road Show: Contextualizing and Interpreting a Digital Collection

By Marielle Gutierrez

Mass. Memories Road Show event layout (pre-pandemic). Photo courtesy of Mass. Memories Road Show and University Archives & Special Collections, Healey Library, UMass Boston.

Mass. Memories Road Show (MMRS) is a statewide, event-based participatory digital archiving program that documents people, places, and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories.* I have been lucky enough to work with this organization as a public history intern. They do amazing work and I am so happy to have played a part in helping the organization grow and expand in the public history world.

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit right when I was seeking internship opportunities for the fall. Understandably, the pandemic suddenly limited the range and availability of internships. Most cultural organizations had to suddenly switch gears to remote work, which often meant learning new technology, and creating new programs and priorities, all of which put enormous strain on already-taxed staff. I was very fortunate that the MMRS moved quickly to reimagine their program and welcomed help to bring the participatory archival project into the (digital) public history sphere. They conceived the internship as entirely remote, which was crucial for me since I relocated back home to California because of the pandemic.

Technology was crucial in supporting my work on this project. I have learned that it is 100% possible to work with people thousands of miles away and still produce a meaningful product—one that expands community histories by shining a light on its residents’ personal histories. Overall, email, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom have all contributed to my success. They have helped me communicate with people throughout the course of my internship. Although it was not without its own difficulties—I did find challenges in communicating efficiently to set up meetings (the bicoastal time difference played a role in this), and we all had technology challenges from time to time.

Archival repositories face challenges in making their collections meaningful and accessible to the public. As an intern with MMRS, I was tasked with identifying ways to contextualize and interpret MMRS (and other) collections, and to suggest some answers to the question: what happens after the Road Show? I undertook research to discover how digital collecting projects have used the materials they have collected. Collecting this data suggested ways that the MMRS can use their materials to create walking tours, (in-person and digital) exhibits, and publish stories in print and via podcast, to name a few examples. My work will be used to create MMRS’s Roadmap to Participatory Archiving—a guide that teaches institutions how to create participatory archiving events and what to do afterwards.

Promotional design for the 2020 Malden Mass. Memories Stuck-at-Home Show. Photo courtesy of Mass. Memories Road Show and University Archives & Special Collections, Healey Library, UMass Boston.

My internship has also allowed me to pilot an example that showcases contextualization and interpretation of community-collected archival materials. In this, I have been working with the Malden Stuck-at-Home Show Collection—resulting from a remote Road Show created for the people of Malden to safely share their archivable materials during the pandemic. The Malden stakeholders in this project have graciously allowed me write and publish four profiles in Malden’s online newspaper, Neighborhood View, about four of the participants and their submitted photos.

Logo of the online newspaper *Neighborhood View*—a newspaper that focuses on Malden stories told by citizen journalists. The newspaper is run by Malden Access Television. Photo courtesy of *Neighborhood View’s* website: https://neighborhoodview.org.

To prepare these profiles, I researched the city of Malden’s history, examined the participants’ photos to understand the stories they found important, designed interview questions, and corresponded with the participants to schedule interviews and invite them to share their story via a feature in Neighborhood View.

My internship with the Road Show also gave me the opportunity to try out social media advertising—something very new, but of growing interest, to me. I have learned that it is not easy work; it requires identifying the perfect marketing picture, in this case a submitted MMRS photo, and writing a few sentences that share that reveal the contributor’s story, the MMRS’s mission, and, most importantly, capture the audience’s attention. It is a fun and creative way to get community histories out into the world.

I have found it very rewarding to bring an archives event into the public history world by sharing these everyday stories. This internship has opened my eyes to the importance and value of community histories, which focus on the contributions of “ordinary people” to history. Their stories deserve to be told, preserved, and shared.

*All submitted material to MMRS is scanned and uploaded to https://openarchives.umb.edu (take a look!).

December 1, 2020Heidi Gengenbach 2 Comments

Internship: Cooking up a Trail in Boston

By Mia McMorris

There are many possible lenses and avenues for exploring Boston’s history. The Boston Women’s Heritage Trail (BWHT) is one of many organizations that use site-based histories to open the past to the public. Their research has culminated in more than 15 different self-guided tours that focus on the contributions of women to Boston’s history. My internship has allowed me to work alongside BWHT’s long time members, Mary Smoyer and Katherine Dibble, to gather resources for a curated tour focused on women in Boston’s food history. This tour will utilize some of their existing data and will be thematic versus their neighborhood-based tours.

The BWHT operates primarily online, with brochures and guides to tour the city. The information is easily accessible through their website. They also host a series of events throughout the year that bring awareness to the impact and achievements of women who have had a significant effect on the city. My internship has allowed me to meet with their board on two different occasions and attend their annual conference, which featured the sculptor Meredith Bergmann as speaker. She designed the Boston Women’s Memorial and spoke about her most recent installation in New York. I have enjoyed my experiences with them, and am impressed by the knowledge and experience of BWHT’s team, and their expertise and dedication to public history.

Boston’s Women Memorial on Commonwealth Ave. honoring, (right to left) Phyllis Wheatly, Abigail Adams, and Lucy Stone. Courtesy of Boston.gov

Perhaps my greatest challenge with this project has been finding historical resources for an inclusive tour that focuses on the themes of food insecurity and innovations made by Boston women to address the problems of hunger in the city. To do this, I reached out to various immigrant communities, contacted local food scholars, and utilized the knowledge brought by the BWHT board members and their networks. But the resources are difficult to find, in published material, or, especially, in archival collections. So I have worked to identify and speak with community members who may have sources to share or suggest. For example, I have made connections with members of the Caribbean community and hope to speak to other immigrant communities to learn about women who have influenced food culture in Boston. I am also in conversation with a former organizer of the Black Panther’s Breakfast program.

The history of women in Boston’s food history does have some documentation, but the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented access to some of these sources. Stay-at-home orders led many research institutions to close their doors, and this has limited my access to valuable documents. Nevertheless, the support of my supervisors at BWHT has allowed me to create a list of viable women to showcase on my tour.

The Kip Tiernan Memorial on Dartmouth Street. Courtesy of Mia McMorris

Kip Tiernan, a pioneer in the fight against food insecurity, is the focus of one stop on the tour. Her memorial, installed on Dartmouth Street near the Boston Public Library, is one of five monuments dedicated to women in Boston. One of Kip Tiernan’s colleagues, Georgia Mattison, spoke with me about Kip’s impact on Boston. Georgia Mattison together with Kip Tiernan played crucial roles in the founding of the Boston Food Bank, which operates as the joint bank of food for many of the shelters of Boston. They provide food and resources across the state, interfacing directly with supermarkets and other food suppliers. The Boston Food Bank is one of the many organizations targeting hunger with which Kip Tiernan was involved. She also helped to establish 16 shelters that feed and shelter residents of the city.

I am honored to work with the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail to curate this tour of Boston. As a newcomer to Boston, learning about this city through the eyes of the women on this tour has provided much food for thought. Focusing specifically on the roles of women in feeding Boston, reveals women’s impact on the city’s history. I hope to bring awareness of women’s roles in Boston’s food history in a positive and long-lasting way that is available to residents and visitors to the city.

Mia McMorris visiting Kip’s Memorial. Courtesy of Lisa Link

November 27, 2018Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Alumni Spotlight: Clara Silverstein

Clara Silverstein is the Community Engagement Manager at Historic Newton in Newton, Massachusetts. A public/private partnership between the Newton Historical Society and the City of Newton, Historic Newton “inspires discovery and engagement by illuminating our community’s stories within the context of American history.” Silverstein has worked for Historic Newton for more than three years now, but the career path that led her there was anything but ordinary.

Before working in community engagement, Silverstein had a long career as a journalist and author. But when journalism became an unsustainable career because of the changes in the marketplace, she decided to apply her research skills and interest in American history in a new field: public history.

Clara Silverstein, photograph provided by Silverstein, 2018

“I changed careers when I was over age 40. It wasn’t too late!” Silverstein recalled of her decision to switch careers. She looked at many programs in the Boston area before deciding to enroll in the public history track of the history MA program at UMass Boston. “I liked UMass because it didn’t seem to focus on the MA merely as a stepping stone to a PhD,” she said. “The schedule also seemed flexible for someone who already had family responsibilities and part-time work. Best of all, it was affordable.”

While at UMass, Silverstein worked with the Tracing Center on the History and Legacies of Slavery, which prepared her for her later work at Historic Newton, where she interprets the Underground Railroad and slavery. Utilizing her already strong research skills, she completed the program with a thesis comparing the interpretation of the founding story of America at Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Two Visitors, Historic Newton House Tour, 2017

After graduating with her Master’s in History, Silverstein did freelancing and contract work before finding a permanent role at Historic Newton. There, as Community Engagement Manager, she plans and manages public programs, including lectures, walking tours, panel discussions, and an annual House Tour attended by more than 400 people. She also manages Historic Newton’s social media accounts, newsletter, and press outreach. “I like finding creative ways to interest the public in history, whether it’s leading a tour about sports heroes or posting an interesting fact about the city on social media,” Silverstein told us.

Since Historic Newton aims to interpret local history in the context of American history with special emphasis on social justice, there is no shortage of creative opportunities for Silverstein. At Historic Newton, she emphasized, “We like to connect past the past with the present.” In the past, for example, the institution has hosted a panel linking activism around abolition in the 19^th century with the current Black Lives Matter movement. Their latest panel event, which took place on November 4^th, was a discussion about the history of language around race, LGBT issues, and disability.

Clara Silverstein giving an introduction at a Historic Newton Event, Newton Center, MA

A rich and diverse collection supports the Silverstein’s efforts to bring history to life for the public. Historic Newton collects a variety of documents and photos that relate to the history of Newton, plus many objects that relate to the material culture and institutions in the city. From maps and records of abolitionist societies to clothing and kitchen tools, Historic Newton preserves and makes accessible the records and items that give insight into the city’s past.

Despite loving her work, like many public historians in small institutions, Silverstein finds it challenging to manage a mountain of responsibilities during a 40-hour work week. Inevitably, she has to let some things– like social media posting– slide when she is overloaded with event planning. Yet she finds ways to get it all done, making use of the assistance of interns whenever possible (take note, current public history students!).

Maintaining a sustainable work-life balance makes it possible for Silverstein to set aside time after hours for her passion for writing. She just published her first novel, a work of historical fiction entitled Secrets in a House Divided: A Novel of Civil War Richmond. (If you’re looking for something to read over Christmas break, you can find it here!)

Ultimately, Silverstein is glad to have left her career in journalism behind. With an eye to the future, she stated, “I want to stay involved in interpreting American history to the public no matter what form it takes – writing, speaking, planning programs, leading tours. I think I have found my calling in life!”

Clara Silverstein and others at the Jackson Homestead Renovation Celebration, 2016

Her advice to current students?

Take advantage of your proximity to Boston and visit its rich historical resources while you’re in school so you can learn how various sites interpret history. Appreciate the opportunity discuss what you’re reading with professors and mentors who structure your learning. Once you leave school, that’s gone!

October 11, 2018Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Alumni Spotlight: Joan Ilacqua

When Joan Ilacqua graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington with a bachelor’s degree in American History and Studio Art: Sculpture, she wanted to contribute to history in a hands-on way. She sought and earned jobs and internships at several national parks, including Yosemite National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, having graduated during the Recession, Ilacqua decided that seasonal jobs weren’t sustainable. She began looking for graduate programs in the Boston area.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 07 April 2007. Image is in the public domain.

“I got advice that I could either go to the ‘big name’ program and use that name as I was job hunting, or the ‘little name’ program and do as much as work as possible to network myself,” she recalls. “I chose UMass because it gave me the opportunity to make connections, to work with other young professionals, and to learn from other experts in the field all at a public university. I gained experience from both archives and public history classes that I continue to use in my outreach work today.”

When she entered UMass, Ilacqua initially focused on archives, but soon switched to public history. While in the program, she made good on her decision to make as many connections in the field as possible, working at the JFK Library, UMass Boston University Archives and Special Collections, and the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also interned at The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston “because I had an interest in queer history but also because I wanted to volunteer for an organization that could not afford to pay an intern.”

Joan started at The History Project in 2013, and she remains involved with the organization five years later as co-chair of its Board of Directors. “I find it so fulfilling as a queer archivist to be able to contribute to documenting, preserving, and sharing LGBTQ history,” Ilacqua says, “and I’ve gained a wealth of management, fundraising, outreach, and events experience.”

Joan Ilacqua and other volunteers for The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston

In addition to sustaining the connections she made at The History Project, Ilacqua now works a the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an institution she first worked for as a graduate student. The Center “serves to enable the history of medicine to inform contemporary medicine and deepens our understanding of the society in which medicine is embedded.” Ilacqua’s initial role at the Center was as an oral historian, leading efforts to collect stories and other artifacts about the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. After the project ended, she continued to work on other oral history and outreach projects for the Center, including the history of diversity and inclusion.

Joan Ilacqua, Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion at the Center for the History of Medicine, 2018.

In June of 2015, Ilacqua was promoted to Archivist for Women in Medicine. Just last week, on October 1^st, the Center expanded the program’s mission to include documenting all people underrepresented in medicine, changing Ilacqua’s title to Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion. Among her many duties in this role, she will advocate for donations of archival materials crated by underrepresented leaders in medicine, establish new collections and acquire accruals to existing collections, build new relationships with potential donors, and promote the inclusion of underrepresented people in medicine through social media, lectures, exhibits, and events. Currently, she is working on an exhibit on the history of diversity and inclusion at Harvard Medical School in collaboration with the school’s Office for Diversity Inclusion & Community Partnership, which is the culmination of an extensive oral history project. The exhibit will be entirely digital in order to promote access throughout the campus community.

Of her position, Ilacqua says, “I find it incredibly rewarding that I get to help cement [records creators’] place in history by making sure that their stories and experiences are documented. Without original documents, and without representation, how can historians write history? I get to make sure that these stories and experiences are preserved.”

The Center for the History of Medicine preserves a diversity of voices in its archival holdings. Notable among its collections are the Miriam F. Menkin papers, 1919-2003 and the Equal Access Oral History Project records. Menkin was a laboratory assistant to John Rock, the scientist who performed the first in vitro fertilization of a human egg in 1944. Her collection only exists because her files were included in the Rock papers, and were separated out once the Center’s processing archivist realized that she was the creator of the records. Menkin’s contributions to the understanding of human fertility wouldn’t be known if her collection hadn’t been saved. The Equal Access Oral History Project began as an attempt to collect the story of affirmative action at Harvard Medical School and grew to include the perspectives and experiences of faculty, students, and alumni about diversity and inclusion at HMS. This project is particularly poignant because these stories aren’t represented anywhere else in the Center’s collections.

The Countway Library of Medicine, home of the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, 1965.

Ilacqua’s passion for diversity and inclusion extends beyond the workplace. As mentioned, she continues to volunteer for The History Project. She is also currently serving a term on the New England Archivists’ Inclusion and Diversity Committee. She hopes that her work on that committee will “help build and maintain an inclusive environment at NEA…in a field that is overworked, underpaid, and often does not create pathways for diversity.”

Through her work at the Center for the History of Medicine, The History Project, and professional organizations, Joan Ilacqua has put her passions for public history, archives, and diversity and inclusion to good use.

Her advice to students seeking to break into in field?

Make as many connections as you can while you are a student. Go to conferences, present at conferences, go to networking events (Drinking at Museums is a great way to meet people and NEA regularly holds networking events), volunteer, get involved with museum and archivist Twitter, read archivist and public historian blogs, do informational interviews. People want to help students, so don’t hesitate to reach out to alumni or to professionals that you admire – the worst thing that can happen is that they say no.

To learn more about the Center for the History of Medicine, its collections, and upcoming events, please click here. Many thanks to Joan Ilacqua for her participation in our Alumni Spotlight series!