Items

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  2021-05

  Bronx Community College ART 89 Syllabus Spring 2021

  Syllabus for partner class ART 89 from Bronx Community College. Instructor Lisa Amowitz. Spring 2021
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  2021-04-25

  Padraic Cohen Internship Portfolio

  This is my portfolio for my internship experience with the JOTPY, thank you so much for this; I really enjoyed working with each and every one of you - thank you for everything.
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  2021-04-24

  JOTPY Internship Portfolio

  This is my portfolio from my experience of working as an intern with the Journal of the Plague Year Public Archive.
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  2021-04-22

  Kathryn Jue JOTPY Portfolio

  In March 2020, I learned about a graduate fellowship for a project called The Journal of the Plague Year. I was intrigued because of my undergraduate work with collecting oral histories of Vietnamese refugees. I really missed doing research in my life as a classroom teacher. This Fellowship seemed to be a way of fulfilling that undefinable project I’d been looking for. When I received an invitation after applying to join the project, it was like a public history baptism by fire. I knew nothing about public history, and I learned a great deal during those five months. However, with so much uncertainty with how my school district was going to respond to COVID, and the eleventh hour decision that we would not be starting the school year in person and all the changes that went along with that, I made the difficult decision to step away from JOTPY when the summer ended. During the fall, I greatly missed the collaborative community, the curating, the debates about metadata, and the entire building of this rapid response, digital archive. This led me to join the Spring 2021 internship. I am so incredibly thankful to have been part of this internship because I learned so much additional information about public history. One of the aspects that I didn’t learn over the summer was the humanities portion of public history. The archive was so new that we really specialized in different areas, mine was building the teaching site. We did have weekly meetings that I greatly enjoyed, but they were more logistical as we tried to figure out how to best build the archive. Many of our meetings dealt with curation and the best process for that. I absolutely loved my summer team, but it was difficult for me to articulate exactly what I did when the summer was over. Going through the internship step by step, I feel far more equipped now to explain exactly what JOTPY is and the process behind it. I also was able to experience many different aspects of the archive, including curating and collecting oral histories, building a collection, writing a call for submissions, and writing public history. The two parts of this internship, aside from curation which I genuinely love doing, that I feel were most beneficial were oral histories and writing the blog post. These are both areas I would like to continue to pursue in some way, even if it not related to this particular project. I did not begin the MA program with any inkling of being part of an internship team or being part of any sort of public history project. However, JOTPY has been the single best part of my graduate program. My work with JOTPY has been a perfect marriage of my two passions, teaching and history. I love being part of a project that is accessible to the students I teach. Not only does it demonstrate to them that history transcends the walls of the classroom, it was a space they were able to be part of by sharing their own stories. I also was able to fulfill a personal desire to be part of project outside my teaching world. I love history. I am incredibly passionate about it, and I am grateful every day of my life that I get to spend my days sharing that passion with teenagers. Yet, I have been wistful for some sort of research to be part of. I love writing, and as a teacher, my writing isn’t really seen beyond the realm of the classroom. I didn’t know public history is where I could fulfill this sort of void. Overall, I am incredibly grateful to have had this experience.
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  2020-11-22

  Angelica S Ramos Portfolio

  Before I started this internship, I was hoping for some direction in my career. I have been out of the workforce for a very long time and was hoping for guidance. I had previous knowledge of public history thanks to a course I had taken early on in this program. It was this same course that pushed me towards pursuing a career in public history. I had always known what I wanted to do; I just didn’t know what it was called. I have acquired so many new skills through this internship experience. Many of these are transferable into my future career. The biggest ones being working with a team asynchronously, creating metadata, and utilizing the best practices for curating and archiving. I also learned how to build a collection, how to utilize my marketing skills and how to run a social media campaign. Moving forward I would love to continue to curate and work on the archive. When thinking about what pushed me out of my comfort zone it is really hard to pinpoint just one aspect. Personally, I am an introvert, this internship pushed me out of my comfort zone socially. I toughly enjoyed talking about ethical issues and best practices with my classmates. Starting this course was overwhelming and the feeling of jumping into the unknown was uncomfortable. Looking back now I have no regrets about choosing to take this course because I have learned so much. The biggest lesson I learned about myself is that I have found what I love to do. I started my historical journey three years ago when I went back to school. I decided on a history degree because I love history but had no idea what I wanted to do with my degree other than I didn’t want to teach. This experience has solidified my desires to go into public history. Although I learned a lot throughout this internship, the connections I have made are more valuable. Through this internship I have met many like-minded people who have already become an important part of my educational journey. I look forward to the next chapter in my life and hoping that leads me to a career in archiving and curating.
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  2020-11-22

  Ashley Pierce's JOTPY Portfolio

  Over the past 14 weeks, I have had the opportunity to work on The Journal of the Plague Year digital archive with Arizona State University. I learned a vast amount over the course of the internship, such as how to write press releases, collection plans, blog posts and other forms of advertising for the archive. I also learned about the ins and outs of archiving and the behind-the-scenes considerations that are involved in building and maintaining an archive. This was my very first graduate school class and as such, I wasn’t sure that starting with an internship was the best idea, but after the first week or two I realized that this was the perfect way to start, since it was basically getting a preview of the type of work someone in the public history field would be doing and I got very excited, determined that this was the type of career I wanted to pursue. The writing for publication skills that I have started to develop, I think will be extremely valuable as those skills are not just applicable to public history, but any career field really. The oral history project also provided the opportunity to work on my interviewing skills. Oral histories are vital to the study of history and even though this is an area I still need to work on, at least now I have the basic foundation to build on. For my collection within the archive, I chose to focus on Law Enforcement, as that is a community that is near and dear to my heart. I currently work in law enforcement and I have family that does as well. When we discussed silences in our weekly readings, we talked about how to identify silences and how to work towards filling them. I noted that there were very few if any, submissions to the archive from the perspective of law enforcement so I wanted to work towards filling that silence. Overall, this internship was a great experience and entry into both the public history field and graduate studies. I know that the skills I have developed here will serve me well as I continue my graduate studies!
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  2020-08-27

  Lawson Miller Internship Portfolio

  I decided to embark on this internship despite no previous experience in public history, and it has afforded me the opportunity to learn many things about the practice of public history and historical collection more broadly. Having worked on the internship in tandem with a fellowship role on the same project had challenged and pushed me in ways I hadn’t imagined. Having begun the project as a volunteer, a fellow, and then an intern placed me at the apex of an entirely new experience, and is part of my drive to challenge myself, to learn, to be part of something larger than myself, and to grow. In my first semester of graduate school, I became deeply immersed and personally invested in a project that had become bigger than I may have initially anticipated. This project has taught me, among other things: leadership, patience, collaboration, how to be adapt quickly, as well as the concept of shared authority. The skills and growth I have received over this journey has been invaluable. In addition to learning important skills and practices relating to history, the internship has given me practical experience in being a leader among my peers, communicating effectively through press releases and social media, and developing effective standardized practices. These skills will be invaluable in whatever I pursue, as well as in my life more broadly. Getting lost in the work of the internship regarding the historical curation of the pandemic, has ironically distracted me from the pandemic itself to an extent, in my personal life. I have paused many times during the course of this internship to reflect on the significance of our work and the significance of this moment in history. The friends and professional relationships I have created through this experience will follow me throughout my life and academic career.