All posts by Meghan Arends

Internship, Public History Student, Public History studies

Internship – Collections and Connections: Interning at the Shirley-Eustis House

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By Rachel Hoyle

I have enjoyed nearly every single aspect of my internship this semester at the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury. My duties have led me to a much deeper understanding of how museums operate, from the mundane – hanging Christmas lights for an evening event – to the glamorous preparation of the house for use as a backdrop in multiple documentaries. The site’s Executive Director, Suzy Buchanan, has been gracious enough to let me trail behind her on Fridays, learning exactly how she does what she does.

However, when I use the word “nearly,” there is one particular aspect of my internship that has led to frustration: the lack of original sources to catalog for my developing web exhibit. Given that my exhibit will focus on enslaved Africans at the house, most of whom do not even have their names written in the historical record, it is not surprising that no artifacts of their existence have survived the past three hundred years. Add to that injustice the constantly changing structure and use of the Shirley-Eustis House (at one point it was even used as a “home for wayward girls”), and it is a recipe for the reproduction rather than the display of original artifacts.

The exterior of the Shirley-Eustis House in 1940, nearly forty years prior to its restoration. As is clear from this image, the house was in very bad condition at one point in time. Photo courtesy the United States National Archives.

It is not as if I am the first person studying African enslavement to encounter this problem. The staff at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), when collecting the first artifacts for display in the museum, ventured around the nation to track down relevant objects. Physical artifacts of African American history had often been either lost, passed around to various families, or stored in people’s attics for generations.[1] It was not negligence keeping these items stowed away – it was an instinct of preservation. Many African Americans certainly knew the value of these artifacts. Rex Ellis, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at the NMAAHC, recalled the moment he first came face to face with the Bible of infamous Black slave revolt leader Nat Turner. The woman who gifted it to the NMAAHC from its longtime place in her family’s Virginia home remarked that “It was time for it to leave here…because there’s so much blood on it.”[2] It was not until the NMAAHC’s founding that many of these artifacts were seen outside the confines of a single family or community, because there were few museums and historic sites willing or able to display them with a mindful acknowledgement of the artifacts’ troublesome and sometimes disturbing histories.

A page from revolutionary and slave revolt leader Nat Turner’s Bible, which is now permanently at the NMAAHC. Photo courtesy the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Once it was clear that there would be a NMAAHC, Founding Director Lonnie Bunch began a groundbreaking campaign to collect these artifacts. Under his “Saving African American Treasures” initiative, Bunch deployed conservationists and other museum professionals around the United States in an effort to identify and save artifacts protected and preserved by generations of Black families. This campaign unearthed tens of thousands of artifacts for the NMAAHC; most were free-will donations made by people who decided their personal collections were finally able to be seen and respected in the manner they necessitated.[3] This distinction between a lack of material culture and a preservation of the very same culture is essential. How many other artifacts are still hidden in an attic, trunk, or basement because museums and historic sites have not been ready to display them respectfully? How many of those relate to the experiences of enslaved Africans?

These stories shaped my thinking as I considered the use of artifacts in my exhibit. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or resources that Bunch and the NMAAHC had to track down material culture relating directly to the house or its enslaved occupants. While there are surviving manuscripts and records of Black occupants of the Shirley-Eustis House, written documents alone do not hold the same meanings or have the same impact as three dimensional artifacts in an exhibition. These documents are most often from the perspective of white, wealthy colonists, while physical artifacts were used directly by enslaved people. The history documents and objects carry is the same, but the perspectives they offer on that history are vastly different. Even neighborhood oral histories, which provide us with engaging ideas of how the house’s story has evolved over time and connect us to individuals’ experiences and stories, have a different impact on visitors than material culture.

It was Suzy Buchanan, the house’s Executive Director, who inspired my ideas for how we might incorporate artifacts into an exhibition on the site’s African American histories. She first mentioned that a large iron washing kettle sat in the basement of the Shirley-Eustis House, right in front of the public restrooms. While it was not original to the house, she qualified, it could at least serve to illustrate some of the work likely performed by enslaved people in the eighteenth century. If that was reasonable, she said, I could include it in my exhibit. I could hardly contain my excitement. There was one part of my problem rather expertly solved.

Immediately I realized that the Shirley-Eustis House also had an unexpectedly large collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical tools and gardening equipment in the attic of our carriage house. While we may not have been able to tell the stories of those enslaved at the house directly through surviving artifacts, we could still use items in our collection to interpret their lives. It is important to note that there are limitations to using nineteenth century artifacts to interpret eighteenth century events – much changed over that century regarding labor and enslavement. Interpreting these artifacts is still worthwhile, even if I acknowledge their weaknesses in my interpretation. In this concrete experience, I realized the importance of a detailed and up to date collections catalogue and the interpretive possibilities that can result.

An 18th or 19th century wooden mortar and pestle in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These and other kitchen tools illustrate the constant labor required in operating a household like the Shirley family’s in colonial Massachusetts. Photo taken by the author.

Two yokes for human use dating to the 18th or 19th century found in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These two objects illustrate the human labor that went into daily operations at the house, even though they are not original to the house itself. Photo taken by the author.

Suzy also reminded me that we at the Shirley-Eustis House are not isolated from other museums. One benefit of designing an online exhibit is the potential to use collections beyond your own by linking other sites’ collections into the digital exhibit. Considering this option helped me realize that creating a rich and informative site on the history of enslavement is my priority for this exhibit, not simply drawing visitors to the Shirley-Eustis House and its unique resources alone. If our exhibit leads visitors to another site with more relevant artifacts, then I have done my job well.

The dispersion of artifacts from the Shirley-Eustis House likely occurred due to changing ownership, renovation, and repeated episodes of the house’s disrepair. It may be impossible to know what became of the site’s original eighteenth century artifacts, but this does not render its staff incapable of interpreting a broader history of the house and its residents, including its laborers. I hope that my exhibit does justice to the lives of enslaved Africans and their roles in local and national histories.

[1] https://sah.columbia.edu/content/prizes/tony-horwitz-prize/2021-lonnie-g-bunch-iii

[2] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History,” The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/analyzing-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture.

[3] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History.”

Internship, Public History Student, Public History studies

Internship – The Significance of an Individual: developing Exhibits in Historic House Museums

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By Meghan Arends

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Photograph taken upon my initial visit in August.

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is owned and operated by the National Park Service. Built in 1759, the Georgian style house became the headquarters of George Washington during the Siege of Boston in 1775. It eventually became the home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when it was bought by his father-in-law as a wedding gift.[1] From then on, the house became an important center of politics, society, and the arts.

The estate drew me in because of my interest in material culture. The collections held at the Longfellow House are numerous and diverse, representing the vast culture the family had the privilege of experiencing during their time. My internship here offered me a satisfying and richly challenging professional experience that expands past encounters with collections.

My overall internship goals were both practical and intellectual. In-depth research of extended family member Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr. for the upcoming temporary exhibit “Longfellow Family in the Civil War” sat at the center of my experience. This involved familiar tasks, including online and off-site research into Nathan’s life, writing exhibit labels for artifacts and, eventually, producing web content to further expand upon his life as a Union soldier. This project required an intense focus on a singular subject and his place within the broader American history, which I don’t always get the chance to explore. Rather than generalized concepts and assumptions, an individual’s history can reveal their impact on the world and vise-versa.

Photographs of Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr., “Appleton Family Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Left: Nathan as a Harvard Student, shortly before entering the war. Right: Nathan after initial enlistment in 1863 as 2nd Lieutenant. Photographs courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The most exciting part of the internship was certainly the weeklong research trip I took to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which maintains the Appleton Family Papers. Hundreds of documents shed light on the life of Nathan and his family in the years surrounding and including the Civil War. The richness and extent of the resources meant that I had to prioritize materials within the extensive collection. I had to determine which sources were most important to the themes and questions of my project, putting others aside. Previous research endeavors have never offered me such a volume of sources. My week spent at MHS taught me the importance of guiding themes in a research project, which is relevant for both historians and public historians.

The professional and practical aspects of the internship are among its greatest rewards, especially the communication and networking opportunities I’ve had with professionals in the field of public history. I attended weekly meetings with the rest of the site staff; they’ve provided an invaluable glance into the world of historic sites and their daily operations. The isolation of an internship can make it seem like the project you’re working on is the only one, but in reality, there are dozens of programs in development simultaneously. Nothing has expanded my personal field of public history knowledge more than hearing from other staff members about the various projects they are working on each day and their contributions to the site’s significance. A historic site can’t rely on one program or strategy to maintain relevance and interest. Diversity in programming and site history helps them serve multiple audiences and their needs.

The internship offered me opportunities to work on new skills, such as writing labels for exhibits. My natural instinct as a historian is to take my time crafting an argument and presenting evidence. That luxury isn’t available when writing exhibit labels, where you must communicate significance and meaning in relatively few words. General introductions that can’t explain the significance of an artifact in the context of the exhibit provide little substance for the audience. We read Beverly Serrell’s guide, Exhibit Labels, in class, but now I’ve had the chance to put her advice into practice and take on the challenges of writing exhibit text to tell stories and connect the past and present.[2] This is done all within 100 words written for the public, not scholars.

Process of writing and editing exhibit labels. 1. A short narrative with a list of the medals (too long) 2. A more narrative approach 3. Revision after separating a medal, requiring a new title 4. Continuous edits that create an interpretive narrative rather than just a list of facts

It’s inspiring to think that the work I’m currently doing isn’t just for a grade in a class. Instead, I hope to leave a mark on my field, to teach people and help them connect to the lives of this family. Eventually, this project will become part of a larger exhibit that will open in the spring of 2022. My work is not yet finished, as I will be helping with the design and execution of that larger exhibit for my capstone project next semester. I’m looking forward to identifying more stories that answer questions, inspire new ones, and entertain the public while pushing them to consider new ideas in the ever-evolving databank that is our history.

[1] Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1996), 19.

[2] “Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters,” Home Page, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm.

Professor profile, Uncategorized

Professor Profile: Bonnie Miller

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Bonnie with her family at Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester.

Bonnie Miller

Bonnie Miller, a UMass Boston faculty member since September 2006, grew up on Long Island and came from a long line of teachers. Before coming to UMass, Bonnie had been preparing to teach practically her whole life! Her mother taught elementary school and English as a second language in New York City. Her father taught middle school social studies. So, from an early age, she knew teaching was the path for her! 

Bonnie attended the University of Delaware as a History major, already preparing to earn her PhD. She was also a devoted Spanish minor and decided to combine her interests for US and Spanish history, starting an independent research project her freshman year focusing on the Spanish-American War of 1898. Bonnie was particularly fascinated by the print culture of the war in both countries. She worked on the project for all four years of her undergrad career. It allowed her to graduate with her first academic publication already in hand, and she presented it at an academic conference. Bonnie states that this moment was a great experience, and it validated her career path.

Having been accepted to the Johns Hopkins History PhD program right after, Bonnie worked with Professor Ron Walters, becoming more interested in political cartoons and historical visual content. It led her to the research that eventually became her book, From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898. After completing her dissertation, Bonnie was hired at UMass Boston as an assistant professor in American Studies. She taught in the department for 14 years before coming over to the History department!

Bonnie loves teaching and working with students more than anything, learning from their work and hearing their ideas. Students push her to think in new directions and make the process rewarding. Though, the commute leaves much to be desired! While stuck on 93 South, you can often find her listening to stand-up comedy to learn new techniques to use in class.

Bonnie’s areas of interest are reflected in the courses she teaches. Her love for US 19th and 20th century social and cultural history, along with visual culture, war, imperialism, and world’s fairs comes through in AMST/HIST 602L: Historical Sequence I, a historical survey that examines early American history topics using different types of sources like diaries, narratives, visuals, material culture, and novels. 

Meanwhile, her love for food studies shines through in AMST/HIST 285L: Food in American Culture, her favorite to teach. It’s an examination of the history of food in the U.S. from the colonial era to now. Students learn about the fast food industry, its influence, global tastes, and business practices. It extends into modern topics like globalization, genetic engineering, food access and safety, climate change, and epidemics such as COVID-19 and obesity. This year, Bonnie was a guest editor for a special issue for the Food, Culture, & Society academic journal on the history of food at fairs and expositions. Bonnie wrote the introduction to the issue, “Special Issue Introduction: Historical and Cultural Perspectives of Food on the Fairgrounds” in addition to her own article, “Food on Display: Design Techniques of the Food Exhibits of the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40.”

Outside of academia, Bonnie has a busy life! She’s been married for almost 18 years and has two children, her son Alex (17) and her daughter Sarina (13). She also has a golden retriever named Orbit, born during the 2017 solar eclipse and a big goofy boy! He’s got lots of zoomies and loves to run in circles, making his name a perfect fit. Bonnie loves to take him to Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester so he can play in the water. She considers that her happy place. She and Alex take him on walks, and they went on lots of hiking adventures during the pandemic, something she’s very fond of. Bonnie’s been staying active and healthy during lockdown!

We always ask professors to give advice to grad students, and Bonnie’s got plenty! She recommends that you know your end goal so you can make decisions to work towards it. “The job market is tough,” she says, “so use your time efficiently while you are in the program to be building up your CV and getting valuable experiences. Explore internship possibilities or present at a conference. Look for opportunities to take a leadership position on campus, if you can. If you have a final project idea in mind, try to choose term paper topics in your classes along the way to help you explore aspects related to it. Graduate school has so many flexible options so that you can craft the program that best fits your long-term needs.” She also tells students to talk to faculty members, as they’re there to help guide you. She wants you to bother her! Don’t be afraid to seek out their advice.

In a chaotic, fast-moving world, Bonnie recommends you pace yourself and focus on the tasks you need to get done today or this week. Time management and self-care are your best friends. Use your breaks during the year to actually let yourself decompress and reset. Remember you can always talk to your faculty members when feeling overwhelmed. 

Finally, we also ask professors to share their favorite historical fun fact. Bonnie’s is the story of Dr. Sidney Haas who, in the 1920s, believed he had found the cure for celiac disease based on a successful study he conducted with celiac patients. The answer was a banana diet! His findings were endorsed by medical authorities at the time, and he became a proponent of the “banana diet” as a popular treatment for the disease. We know now, of course, that gluten causes celiac disease, but since bananas have no gluten, Dr. Haas’s findings were unintentionally true! Bonnie loves that story in particular because “it shows how misleading research findings can be when you don’t consider other contextual factors.” It also aligns with Bonnie’s belief that nutritional factors are much more significant to many health problems we face than most give credit for. 

professor profileUMass Boston faculty
Archives students, Digital Archives, Internship

Internship: Archives, Virtual Reality, and the Preservation of Memory

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By Meghan Arends

Technological advancements present new opportunities within education, both in classrooms and in public settings. The world of Virtual Reality introduces a unique method of interaction with history, something that has inspired Greenhouse Studios at the University of Connecticut. One of their most recent projects, temporarily titled “Courtroom 600,” is an educational experience that combines the video game technology and archival sources to give players a firsthand look at the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. By using actual evidence and testimony documented from the case, Greenhouse Studios aims to present the historical truth to students, museumgoers, and gamers in an effort to keep collective memory of the Holocaust alive at a time most paramount.

I began working with the Courtroom 600 team as a graduate archives intern this past summer. Since the internship was remote, my work focused on digital archives rather than within a traditional repository. I previously had very little experience in the field of digital archives, but with the help of my supervisor, I became well-versed in metadata, Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, and HOCR. This is because the game uses documents from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers, held at the UConn Archives & Special Collections, to narrate the story of the Holocaust. Players will discover these documents as clues in the game, building the story as they go. These documents will need to be collected and interpreted for the sake of gameplay, and the program will link players to each document’s original listing on the digital repository. Therefore, I was editing useable and searchable data to prepare these documents for use within Courtroom 600.

A comparison between the OCR generated by Tesseract and the corrected product. German names were often difficult for Tesseract to recognize, and inconsistencies in the typewriter’s printing created numerous errors. This image comes from a presentation I gave at the CTDA Annual Meeting in June.

OCR is essentially a transcript of what is on a document. The University of Connecticut Archives & Special Collections uses a program called Tesseract, which reads each page of an archived document and generates a read-out of the text. This transcript is then visible to users of the digital repository within the book viewer of the document. Meanwhile, HOCR is an HTML version of OCR used to make a document searchable. HOCR doesn’t just read what’s on the document; it maps out the content, generating bounding boxes around each word to highlight searches. As we learned over time, OCR and HOCR both generate from the original object but do so separately. We were unable to find a way to intertwine the editing processes, so I had to use an XML editor to display and edit the HOCR. The issue with automatically generating OCR and HOCR is that they’re not always accurate, especially when originating from documents created on older technology like the typewriters used during the trials. Errors typical to typewriters (i.e., letters typed over letters to correct typos and mechanical issues) create errors in the transcripts.

Unlike computers, we can recognize the actions and errors of other humans. Approximately half of my time during this internship was spent correcting the OCR. This was done within Islandora, the program used to build the digital repository, and was relatively simple. It was tedious at times, especially when an error was continuously made during the original generation, but that time was mostly spent correcting typos and focusing on consistency for line spacing and the characters used. This was a learning process, as we were still just experimenting within the program. The other half of my time was then spent updating the HOCR, though not just the typos. The bounding box coordinates had to be checked and adjusted to create an accurate map of the page. I also helped update descriptive metadata for individual pages, once again aiding their searchability, but the main purpose of this internship was to help develop and streamline the editing process so that it could be passed on to future interns and assistants with near flawless execution

An example of HOCR being edited in Notepad++, an XML editor. The numbers proceeding “bbox” correspond to the word’s position on the page, creating a box to highlight each word during a search

OCR and HOCR exist for an important reason: to make archival sources fully accessible to researchers. These documents are supposed to provide an enriching experience to gameplayers, who are meant to interpret the sources to fully understand the gravity of the situation. The HOCR obviously has to be accurate to what is on each page to make it searchable. If it isn’t edited and is instead left with numerous errors that come from computer generation, the search feature becomes inoperative and pointless. Leaving inaccurate OCR just creates confusion and inconsistency. As I learned, the necessity of accuracy holds greater significance than just providing tools for use. With this internship, I witnessed the practical application of archives and the significance they can provide. One of the primary purposes of archives is to preserve historical truth for future generations to utilize. Archives are essential keepers of public memory and can be vital tools for communities, educators, and activists. The job of the archivist is to preserve and document these truths and to aid researchers in its discovery, or rediscovery. To provide any information to the public that is not truly accurate to the original source is to provide false information.

There is, unfortunately, a deeply rooted history of denial when it comes to the Holocaust. Despite best efforts to punish those who committed such atrocities, anti-Semitic sentiments always linger. When I ponder the importance of Courtroom 600 and these documents, I think of swastikas spray-painted on walls, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and the tragic vandalization of monuments meant for mourning. These documents are actual evidence used during the trials. They are representations of the truth that historians and archivists are continuously working to keep within the light to work against misinformation and hate. Editing metadata and transcriptions is necessary; to provide anything less than full accuracy is a misrepresentation of the truth. Even if it’s out of pure ignorance, it is alteration of the facts. My job was certainly to make research easier for users of the repository and to prepare a polished product for use in the game, but my job was to also ensure that, no matter what public users look at or what feature they use, the truth of what occurred during that period would be visible. I learned during this internship that within archives, there’s a responsibility to the moral significance that comes with accessioning and processing historical artifacts. Each step of the archival process must consider what each artifact represents to specific groups. Doing so only helps to serve the communities we help preserve.

Upper left: an example of the documents I worked with. Upper right: an example of what OCR looks like from an editor’s point of view. Lower left: Search results using HOCR mapping. Lower right: Text transcript of document generated by OCR. Images courtesy of the Connecticut Digital Archive.
Archives internshipdigital archivesHOCRmetadataOCRvirtual reality
Internship, Public History Student

Internship: A Fresh Perspective on local History

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By Tom Begley

We rarely have the opportunity to learn a city’s history through the perspectives of women. Until recently, the everyday lives and achievements of women have not been well documented or celebrated, silenced or pushed to the margins. Since the mid-20th century, historians and public history institutions have increasingly worked to fix this, searching the records and highlighting stories of women and other marginalized populations. During my internship with Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the South Coast (LTW) I worked on a new educational tool for the program and in the process learned important pieces of the history of New Bedford, Massachusetts through the inspiring stories of women of the city. It became clear how the city was shaped by their activism, organization, and passion to improve their communities.

Since 2018, the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s initiative LTW has highlighted women from Massachusetts’ South Coast, the region stretching from Cape Cod to the Rhode Island border. LTW seeks “to explore the impact of historical women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds throughout history” by “unearthing remarkable stories of women’s callings that required grit, tenacity, and enduring commitment to their families, careers and communities,” (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org). With thought provoking programs, online profiles, a mobile app, educator and school group resources, walking tours, forums, public art displays, and community civic engagement campaigns, LTW invites people to learn about their local history through the stories of women.

Lighting the Way. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Working with LTW coordinator Cathy Saunders, my project was to create a mobile tour driven by an overarching narrative to explore a specific theme in the city’s history. Rhode Tour, a joint initiative between Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Rhode Island Historical Society, will host the tour. Rhode Tour is a smartphone app and website that brings stories and tours to the palm of the user in an engaging display, (www.rhodetour.org). The platform also serves as a digital exhibit space presenting “big ideas” and telling history through multimedia, essays, and links to additional resources such as articles and videos. Joining Rhode Tour will extend LTW’s reach and mission to the thousands of users who access the website and app each year.

I began my work by identifying themes in the collection of 100 profiles of women available on the LTW website. LTW intends to connect the tour to Massachusetts civic curriculum standards. With this in mind the long tradition of women activists and organizers started to become apparent. From abolitionists to PTA members to elected officials, women have worked to improve their South Coast communities and beyond. This realization brought us to the theme for the tour – “Organizing New Bedford: The Women Who Mobilized Change.”

Creating a shortlist of potential tour stops was the first hurdle to overcome. Rhode Tour suggests 6-8 stops and with so many fascinating LTW stories it was hard to choose only a handful of women to feature. To narrow the list and meet the requirement we established a set of criteria. We looked for women who spent the majority of their careers in New Bedford, motivated others to create change, and had several types of multimedia available to help tell the story. Through conversations with Cathy and LTW advisory committee members, the list eventually met the target with 6 tour stops highlighting the work of 7 women: Elizabeth Carter Brooks, Jennie Horne, Rosalind Poll Brooker, Rosemary Tierney, Eula Mendes, Polly Johnson, and Mary Santos Barros.

The Lighting the Way website (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org) features over 100 profiles of South Coast women, education resources, and a self-guided walking tour. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

After selecting the women, we sought appropriate locations for each tour stop. Some were readily apparent such as New Bedford City Hall for Rosalind Poll Brooker and Rosemary Tierney, the first women elected City Councilor and mayor, respectively. Others were more difficult because the places associated with the stories no longer exist or have become private residences. The textile mill where strike leader Eula Mendes worked has been torn down, as was the community center Jennie Horne directed. We also had to consider the current status of neighborhoods and whether it was appropriate to encourage people to visit. The historic areas of the city are surrounded by active neighborhoods and we wanted to be respectful of residents’ privacy. For guidance I turned to people more familiar with the city than me.

The final step was to write each tour stop. The existing LTW profiles served as the foundation as I added new information and reshaped text to focus on the aspect of the woman’s life that exemplified our theme of organizing for change. The realities of researching women’s history were uncovered during this stage. Sources are limited, yet by looking closely at the silences stories start to emerge. We also had the great fortune of connecting with family members who provided a wealth of information about their mothers that wasn’t available otherwise.

The content experts involved with LTW were all incredibly gracious with their time and knowledge as I worked on the project. In particular Jan da Silva (New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park), Lee Blake (New Bedford Historical Society), Mary Smoyer (Boston Women’s Heritage Trail), and Ann O’Leary (NBWM Emily Bourne Research Fellow) provided detailed notes on appropriate locations and storylines to include in the tour. Overall, I owe my positive experience to Cathy Saunders who guided me through the process and shared her public history expertise to ensure that I considered the many different factors in order to properly share these women’s stories.

Recently, one of the LTW committee members, a lifelong resident of New Bedford, shared that she loves her city and was thrilled to see this “Organizing New Bedford” tour bring long deserved attention to the work these women did to make the city a better place. I hope others from New Bedford feel the same way and that this project may inspire students to get involved in issues important to them. It was an honor to work on this project and play a small part in furthering LTW’s educational mission. Not only did I enjoy sharpening my skills as a public history practitioner, but as a student of history, it was especially impactful to learn about New Bedford through the deeds of these amazing women.

Internship, Public History Student

Internship: Cold War Cassin Young

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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
Internship – After the Road Show: Contextualizing and Interpreting a Digital Collection
Internship, Public History Student

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

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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!).

Internship, Public History Student

Internship: Cooking up a Trail in Boston

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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
Internship, Public History Student

Internship – A Guide Through History Day: Supporting Teachers and Students

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By Lillian Nunno

Every year, grade 8-12 students and teachers across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts participate in the National History Day contest. History Day students create projects centered around that year’s History Day theme. These projects can take the form of a paper, an exhibit, a website, a documentary, or a performance. Past competition themes have included “Conflict and Compromise” and “Triumph and Tragedy.” This program allows students to learn about history they are passionate about, and develop strong research, argumentation, and analytical skills. The education department at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) runs History Day here in Massachusetts; they organize the regional and state competitions and provide resources for students and teachers to help them along in the process.


Logo for NHD Massachusetts program. Courtesy of National History Day.org

For my internship project with the Education Department at MHS, I created a teacher’s guide for Massachusetts History Day teachers. This guide will provide teachers with materials to help guide students from topic selection through competition. Making the guide involved poring over materials developed by other states across the country to find the most useful worksheets and resources. I also looked at how other states structured their materials and what they included. At the same time,  I kept in mind the needs of students and teachers. I wanted to create a guide that wasn’t overwhelming for teachers, but covered each project stage. I tried to prioritize creating a guide that was easy to use because this guide is for teachers who are new to the History Day program.  I also wanted to choose worksheets that are useful to students and not overly long or detailed.

I also developed ideas for original materials for the guide. My research revealed that many states have a resource that highlights local history topics for student projects. So I proposed creating a Massachusetts Topic List of people and events related to the state’s history. This resource will help connect students with research materials and sources from MHS and other local institutions.   Local topics can be more accessible than national topics, as students can visit historical institutions to do primary source research. Unfortunately, while students may not be able to do that this year because of the pandemic, they may still have some digital access to these institutions and collections. In developing this list, I tried to highlight some lesser-known Massachusetts figures and events and those often absent from larger historical narratives.


Massachusetts History Day students at National History Day in Maryland in 2019. Courtesy of the Massachusetts History Day Facebook page.

I am also creating a resource for teachers to help students with “difficult history” topics. Students often want to explore complex issues and events to which they have some personal connection. Because of this, students may encounter historical topics that are upsetting and hard to process. So I reviewed materials created by other organizations that focus on helping students understand and process more complicated issues. I also consulted educational materials that focus on social-emotional learning, which are used in classrooms to help students develop self-awareness and emotional maturity. Teachers, who bring experience in these areas, are especially important resources for my work.  While History Day allows students to grapple with more difficult moments in history, which is a strength of the program, they also need tools to help them understand and confront this history.

I came to this project with some prior experience as an undergraduate, in one of the nation’s biggest History Day programs. In my two years of mentoring students and interacting with teachers, I observed the needs and challenges that arise, and I became invested in the program as I witnessed students’ work on their projects. This background has helped me in developing materials, and in collaborating with my supervisors. Luckily the need to go remote did not impact the structure of my internship, but it has made contacting teachers more challenging since they are currently dealing with a different teaching experience.  On the other hand, this remote internship has helped me keep in mind the virtual aspects of learning in today’s classrooms as I assemble the guide. Working on this project has deepened my appreciation and admiration for the History Day program.

This internship has helped me understand how historical institutions can help teachers and students in this remote and hybrid learning era when teachers are dealing with more than ever before. Historical institutions can create materials for classrooms that can support teachers by providing resources for in-depth and meaningful history education. They can also help students understand “difficult history” and connect to their communities’ pasts. As someone with an interest in improving history education from outside the K-12 classroom, this experience has shown me a possible path for my future career.


Massachusetts History Day students with their project in 2019. Courtesy of the Massachusetts History Day Facebook page.
Professor profile

Professor Profile : Tim Hacsi

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Tim Hacsi (he/him/his)

Tim is an Associate Professor of History and the History Department Chair

Historical Interests: 20th Century political and social history

Classes: Introductory History of Comic Books; Graduate FDR course; Occasionally HIST 101, various other history courses

Tim grew up in California and was an avid comic book collector. He even attended San Diego Comic Con in its first years of existence and was the 132nd person to register. Tim received his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in Ohio, then received both his masters and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in just five years. Before coming to UMass Boston, Tim worked in the policy world for six years at various institutions such as the University of Chicago, Berkeley, and Harvard. Deciding he needed a change in career scenery, he eventually accepted a position at UMass Boston and became a visiting assistant professor. He’s now been here for eighteen years. 

Though he has a slew of responsibilities as Department Chair, Tim most enjoys working with students, as he likes working with students to see classes as an intellectual endeavor and finding what interests them. He says that every class is different and it’s rewarding to find what engages each student. Tim lives with his wife and has two children, one of which is in college and the other is in high school. While he collects comic books less these days, he does enjoy collecting comic book art and spent much of his quarantine building Lego sets and reading.

Favorite Historical Story: FDR was elected November 1932 as the Depression grew worse. A friend told him that if he succeeded, he would go down as the greatest president in American history. FDR responded that if he, instead, failed, he would be the last president in American history. This was because there were calls for a dictatorship at this time. Hitler had been put into power, not through election, just before FDR’s inauguration. FDR stated that if Congress would not pass his legislation to deal with the effects of the Depression, then he would ask for temporary wartime powers to do so. He was applauded by a vast number of Republican newspapers and several Democratic leaning publications.

Advice for Grad Students: Tim’s greatest advice is to advocate for yourself as a student and not beat yourself up for having an unproductive week. Being overly tough on yourself can make the situation worse. Instead, choose one small task to accomplish first and take baby steps to grow from there. He also recommends you reach out to your professors and don’t be afraid to ask for extensions during these trying times. Remember that these times aren’t the same as usual, and there will be wrenches thrown in plans. Take one step at a time!