![]() ![]() “I have found letters and stories wrote at the New York Public Library and additional documents from the Ohio Historical Society, which sent me the letters between David and his father, the former Governor of Ohio, as well as documents he wrote during his political activism years after the war.” While Ashley began her project from an impartial position, keeping McKelvy White’s memory alive turned into an urgent task, a need to memorialize his life. Student Ashley Martinez found that the archive lacked information about David McKelvy White, a professor of English at Brooklyn College who unexpectedly left his teaching position in 1937 to fight in Spain, so she expanded her search well beyond the Tamiment: “I have embarked on a nationwide search for information,” she reported. The archival visits generated a variety of connections for students and by students as they explored the stories and experiences of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and began to understand why fellow CUNY students left everything and sailed to Spain to fight a war the US government largely ignored. The final paper, posted individually on the Narrating Memory website, represented the culmination of the semester-long research they undertook at the Tamiment. Each student chose one Lincoln volunteer as the subject of their final essay and researched archival material to elaborate their motives to fight in the war. From then on, they visited the archive on their own. The class visit to the Tamiment helped students to understand the role of the archive in their final project. She organized four groups of approximately five students so they could rotate and discuss each item to provide a broad introduction to the archives. In February 2018, librarian Danielle Nista arranged four sets of documents (posters, diaries, and photos) for our analysis. After introducing the students to the ALBA collection, the librarians provided an information sheet and instructional activities for students to discuss in groups in order to familiarize them with the archival material. The librarians reviewed the course syllabus and became familiar with the course goals prior to the first class visit. The ALBA Collection at NYU’s Tamiment Library, which includes primary-source documents related to the Americans who volunteered to serve in the SCW, brings the past to life for contemporary CUNY students.Īt the Tamiment, María initially worked with former Public Services and Instruction Librarian Kate Donovan and currently works with Public Service Librarian Sara Moazeni and Reference Associate Danielle Nista. María’s undergraduate classes concentrate on 20th-century Spanish literature, where the Spanish Civil War serves as a common subject uniting historical and fictional narratives in the course. Iris Finkel, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Hunter College, has assisted students and faculty with research assignments in physical and digital archives and used her digital humanities expertise to help students and faculty understand the norms and creative approaches to digital presentation. ![]() The students have made their work available on three WordPress based sites: Narrating Memory, Rhetorical Reflections in the Hunter College Archives, and Archival Research and Rhetoric. ![]() Photo María Hernández Ojeda.Įditors’ note: The following is an excerpt from an article published in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.įor the past five years, students in our courses at Hunter College have performed research in the institutional archives at Hunter and the Tamiment Library, exploring topics such as the efforts of Hunter women to establish free kindergarten in New York City, to organize the Lenox Hill Settlement House, and to become involved in CUNY student activism during the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War. María Hernández-Ojeda’s Narrating Memory assignment is part of her courses on Spanish literature, while Wendy Hayden’s Rhetorical Reflections assignment is included in her courses on rhetoric and writing. Hunter College students research the ALBA Collection at the Tamiment Library (NYU), April 2018. ![]()
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