Carleton, History, and Covid-19

Hi everyone! My name is Marcella (she/her/hers) and I am a junior History major with minors in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Creative Writing. I am currently at home with my family in Pierre, South Dakota. My main historical focus during my time at Carleton has been on medieval Europe as well as ancient Greece and Rome. After taking Historians for Hire last term though and working with the MSAB, I have been discovering a newfound interest and passion for public history. I am excited to continue contributing meaningfully to the field of history this term albeit in a different way than I initial thought.

We are undeniably living through a very historic time right now and I know I have struggled with feeling helpless. It’s a very “the world is ending and I am folding laundry” type feeling. My hope for this course is to be able to help in some small way even if it is just to make sure that what is happening right now won’t be forgotten and to ensure there is a wide array of voices being saved for future historians. I have learned a lot about archives in my other history classes and I’m excited to actually be a part of making one.

My main focus for this class will be on the experiences of college students, particularly Carls, during this time. (Possibly on the experiences of professors as well.) Even among our rather small community, I have seen such a diverse array of experiences in the last month. There are people struggling with everything from sick family members to financial struggles to problems with internet connection. How our worlds are being turned upside down due to this pandemic is important to save for posterity and I’m glad to have a part in doing so. I have also been deeply impressed watching students and faculty band together to support one another and stay connected. These efforts are just as, if not even more, important to record and save.

If time permits I hope to have a secondary focus on my state and how it has dealt with this crisis. As a very rural state with an extremely small population, South Dakota has not been very hard hit by this pandemic thus far. This has unfortunately fostered a false sense of safety which has made us very slow to take concrete preventative measures. At this point we are one of the few states left with no stay at home or shelter in place orders. I want to record what is happening here on both a government and personal level.

Hi everyone! My name is Jacob Bransky and I am a senior Geology major from Gays Mills, WI. I first became interested in this class as I enjoy looking at local archives from my area. I especially like learning about changes in land use and also learning the stories of people who lived in the same area but at a very different time. In geology classes, I have had opportunities to examine historical archives for the Northfield area and to study changes in landscape since European settlement. This term, I am looking forward to learning about the archiving process and I hope to better understand and appreciate the work that goes into preserving historical documents.

This term I will be at home which has thankfully had few coronavirus cases. My community is older and lower income than the state and national averages which led me to focus on generational and income inequalities as a theme. I want to focus on the way these inequities are affecting people’s lives including difficulties many people face accessing education and food as well as generational differences in reaction to the virus. These are some of the ideas I have coming into the course and I look forward to learning more about the archiving process which will help me to hone my thoughts.

Hello! My name is Natalie and I am a sophomore from Aurora, Illinois. I just declared American Studies, and so this project and the opportunity to explore the impact of this virus on our country is really exciting to me. I do not have any experience with public history, but that is why I chose to take this class. I think it is really important to push myself out of my comfort zone to both to grow academically and to engage with the world around us at this socially isolated time. Previously, I have been very focused on the historic aspects of American Studies, so this current project is something new for me! The most significant aspect of this project for me is being able to preserve history for future generations. It is incredible to think how our lifetime will be taught to future generations and that we are living through history everyday. It really puts my life into perspective, realizing that we are just part of a bigger picture that will later be studied.

I will be focusing on COVID-19 and social inequalities, examining how this pandemic is impacting family dynamics on both the level of immediate and extended families. I think it will be interesting to explore both the positive and negative consequences of the social isolation and stay at home orders. From my own personal experience, some families have been able to bond and spend quality time together. On the other hand, there are other strained or broken families that could be forced to live together for financial or convenience reasons. In these cases, the families can be worse off then they were before, possibly causing violence or emotional scars. Additionally, some extended family members are split apart from each other in order to keep everyone safe, possibly straining the elderly if they usually rely on their family on an everyday basis. Lastly, I would also like to include single parent families and document their challenges in addition to or in comparison to the struggles facing two parent families. Overall, I am ready to learn more about how this crisis is impacting various family situations and bring awareness to those struggling.

Hi all. My name is Sam Kwait-Spitzer. I (he/him/his) am a junior history major and Spanish minor. What drew me to History in the first-place is how people-centric of a discipline it is. At its core (as if there exists a single core of History) History is about stories, understanding lived experience and tracing the systems of power that exist at all levels of community. Though my major subfield is Early Modern/Modern Europe, by virtue of having taken the most amount of classes in the field, I still am not sure what my primary thematic interests are within history as defined by these subfields. What fascinates me most about history is exploring how individuals consume political rhetoric, and how conceptions of political moments and projects of nation-building are informed by identity. Since politics exists in the most public of realms, my academic interests segway quite nicely into projects of public history. After taking HIST 298, I am interested in putting the theory we learned, especially as it pertains to the construction, control, and preservation of knowledge, into practice.

I hope by being an active participant in the archive-building process, I will become a more self-reflexive scholar, and better able to see how power operates as it pertains to the ownership of historic knowledge. More specifically, I am interested in archival work with school newspapers. I would like to work with content in which I have a particular stake. So both as a college student and campus journalist, I feel that I can leverage my positionality to help build an archive that represents the impacts/feelings/experiences associated with COVID-19 in a college setting. I look forward to being on both sides of the archive.

I think this is the first moment in my life where the historical nature thereof is so clear. Certainly, this is also enmeshed in my privilege, as I am not forced to reckon with my existence, survival, or societal collapse frequently, but that should not diminish the unique nature of this moment for all. Going back to my aforementioned interest in individual conceptions of political moments, I am interested in seeing how different individuals, communities, and institutions are conceptualizing the abundantly historical nature of this moment. Public health crises often exacerbate and lay bare the fault lines of power within a society. I am excited to help build an archive that represents how different agendas are at play-during this crisis, those that seek to reify the status quo, those that seek to break down inequities, those that do both, or those that lie somewhere in the middle.

Hello, I’m Clara, a sophomore and Psychology major, from Cornish, New Hampshire.

This is my first term taking HIST200 Historians for Hire, and I’m really excited to start working on the COVID-19 project. Since my mom is severely immune comprised, I decided to live with a host family until the end of spring term. Even though I’m incredibly lucky to be in a safe location, the last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster. I also understand that this may be a similar situation for other Carleton students, who were unable to return to their families during these turbulent times. 

I want the theme of my project to be about displacement from home during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I want to share a collection of stories from students who are still on campus or living with a host family. Even though my plan isn’t fully structured, I’m hoping to collect various interviews from students, possibly including photos that remind them of home and/or portray something that has given them joy throughout quarantine.  

I can’t wait to contribute to the COVID-19 archive, and work with my peers!

Hello, my fellow quarantiners, my name is Michael and I am a sophomore History and PoliSci double major, from the land of the potatoes (Boise Idaho).  I am still unsure what I want to focus on within the discipline of History, however, I am particularly interested in Political and Intellectual European History. My connection to public history started during my senior year of high school when I volunteered at the Boise Old Idaho Penitentiary. During my time at the penitentiary, I served as an assistant curator for weapons collection, where I spent most of my time talking to visitors and organizing some of the records of the penitentiary. This is my first term taking Historians for Hire and I couldn’t be happier to finally take the class, even though I thought I would be working on a completely different project. I am thrilled to be part of this great team recording these chaotic times.

Currently, I am quarantined in Idaho. This experience has shaken my understanding of the world and left me feeling like a stranger in this new world. Idaho has been relatively lightly hit by the pandemic; however, a 6.5 earthquake rocked the state on March 31^st. Luckily nobody was injured but the experience has left an even deeper sense of loss of familiarity with the world. I am interested in exploring how the pandemic is affecting the strangers amongst us and especially the people who are exiled and have no place to call home. I am purposely using the word stranger to illuminate the struggle these people face and how society purposely limits their freedom. There are many different types of strangers, however, I am planning more so to limit my conversation on refugees, asylum seekers, and people with disabilities. The strangers within our communities are significantly impacted by the pandemic, and if we do not highlight their struggles and challenges, we would be allowing their stories to disappear into the yawning mouth of time.

I hope to include a wide range of mediums that will convey the tales of strangers and exiles. I believe a diversity of these mediums is key in capturing the full extent of the crisis we are all living through. Only by preserving these stories of the strangers can we preserve their memory and learn from their experiences.

Hello! My name is Elias (he/him) and I am a junior history major. I am from the Hudson Valley of New York, which is where I will be living for the duration of the term. My primary focus in history at Carleton has been on histories of colonialism and decolonization, resistance against structures of oppression, and international exchange. Additionally, over the past few terms I have developed a keen interest in public history, particularly in theorizing about how history might best be produced and reproduced for diverse public audiences. Beyond the realm of the theoretical, however, I do not have a lot of experience in this area. I am very excited to be working with my peers in HIST200 this term on creating and curating an archive dedicated to this particular moment! 

My focus throughout the term will be on how organizations and institutions have evolved and changed their practices to continue serving their communities. Decision making within public institutions is fascinating enough as an object of historical inquiry, and this moment of urgency and uncertainty has raised the stakes substantially. I have been very interested, over the past few weeks, in observing how organizations and institutions that communities depend upon for various services and goods have responded to these troubling circumstances. In the chaos of this moment it is also important to keep in mind the various stakes and incentives that drive decision making. Economic, relational, and public health imperatives are interacting within every household, business, and Zoom call. From newspapers providing increased online services to public parks making admission free to the subway system in NYC running fewer trains, the landscapes of our lives are changing significantly and – importantly – differentially. 

It is important to highlight these changes in the public, institutional infrastructure of this moment in order to allow historians of the present and future to examine the structural and cultural contours and faultlines that this moment has elucidated.

My name is McLain Sidmore and I am a Junior history major at Carleton. My focus is the study of American history and I have had several experiences working in public history, particularly in the area of education in the Northfield Middle School SCOPE project and at the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind. I hope to rely on this background in research and archival creation to allow me to shift my focus to compiling an archive of this new world we are living in and working to identify and preserve diverse voices for future generations of historians.

I am spending this quarantine at home in Juneau, AK which has thankfully been somewhat isolated from the worst of the disaster. Yet rural areas present their own risks and we will likely see far greater impacts in the coming months on these areas. The lockdowns and mitigation efforts are also having tremendous impacts around the country but their certainly not being felt equally among all Americans. For this reason, I am interested in working this term on how this pandemic is affecting different age groups, from seniors and elders who are being separated from their families and communities that rely on them as leaders, to children, some of whom are without access to the education, food, or safety that school affords them. These are stories we need to highlight and understand during the pandemic, and to preserve and remember for years to come.

Hello, I’m Miyuki, a sophomore and a History major, from Tokyo, Japan.

This is my third time to take HIST200 Historians for Hire, and I’ve been working on curating historical objects and creating an online exhibition for the first two terms. For this time, I’m going to dive into this project of the ongoing pandemic, COVID-19, and I’m proud to be part of this project.

Currently, I’m away from home and stay on campus in Northfield, Minnesota. Making use of my current situation, I want to set my theme of this project “Me being Distant from Home.” I’m going to share the stories that I experienced not only in Northfield but also (mostly) online in the course of communications between me and my family or friends back in Japan.

As one of the means to share my stories, I’m going to use the photographing skills that I gained from an art course at Carleton and knowledge of Digital Humanities that I leaned through the working experience at Digital Humanities Associates(DHA). I hope the stories I’ll share will connect people even if they are on the opposite side of the world.