“The purpose of this exhibition is to provide a space for our faculty member, Dr. Laura Cardon, to showcase her innovative pedagogy,” said Amy Hildreth Chen, a Council on Library and Information Resources postdoctoral fellow. “She brought special collections material into her English 103 honors composition course, which is unique as most teaching with archival items is reserved for higher-level students.”
Laura Cardon, an assistant professor in the English department, said she wanted to familiarize her students with archival research, though they are all freshmen.
“The exhibition features 13 students who thoughtfully incorporated pieces from the Division of Special Collections into their research presentations,” she said. “The assignment aims to familiarize students with conducting archival research, using a range of different sources and media and synthesizing research materials to construct a narrative. Students uploaded their family narratives on a website we built with the Alabama Digital Humanities Center. We also visited the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, where students learned how to research archival materials.”
Cardon and Chen worked together to assist students and help them approach their assignments from a personal perspective by using their own family histories. The students’ assignments were both genealogical and historical.
“Doing a physical display with Special Collections items was an extra-credit option for the students, but we thought that they’d find the result enticing enough to do the extra work,” Chen said. “And, as this show proves, many students agreed with us.”
Cardon mentioned Annemarie Lisko, a freshman majoring in English whose work will be on display in the exhibition, as having an impressive display.
“ My exhibit is about the Gnann family, my ancestors who came to Georgia from Langenau, Germany, in the mid-1700s,” Lisko said. “They came to America as part of what is referred to as the Georgia Salzburger movement, in which Protestants from Salzburg, Austria, and the surrounding areas fled their country to avoid religious persecution.”
Lisko mentioned she had a family member who really helped get her project in motion. It created a foundation for the assignment and from there she was able to move along in the research process.
“At first, I wasn’t actually sure what direction I was going to go in with the genealogy project, but I did know that my grandmother has studied the history of her family a lot,” she said. “So I called her right at the beginning of the assignment and asked her if she could tell me some things about our a ncestors. I loved finding out all these thing s that I hadn’t known about my family before, and I hope that I presented my exhibit in a way so that others might find it as neat as I do.”
The exhibition will be on display from Thursday until spring break and is open to the public.
“The exhibit is enjoyable and educational,” Cardon said. “After all, it’s essentially about storytelling. Even though the project is grounded in heavy academic and archival research, the students who created the strongest presentations (including those in the exhibit) unearthed rich, personalized narratives. These are powerful stories, and they are meant to be appreciated and enjoyed. I hope that visitors to the exhibition will learn something from the students’ work, but I also hope they will feel inspired to conduct their own research in the Special Collections libraries.”
