Presenting Carleton’s Archives
Kate shows off her pop-up exhibit for her Irish history class and explains the work that went into it.
Kate shows off her pop-up exhibit for her Irish history class and explains the work that went into it.
Last week, I wrote a blog about how I utilized Carleton’s archives in my classes this term. This past week, my partner and I presented our research as part of a public history event about Irish music. I thought I would write a follow-up blog to show how archival research moves from the classroom to a public history event!
Choosing Archival Materials
For our pop-up exhibit, we decided to pick two Irish songbooks and one Irish language book to show how music and language are integral parts of the Irish identity. This decision was more difficult than it looks because we also had to choose which song to display from each book.
Background Research
After choosing our pop-up material, Caroline and I spent a lot of time distilling our class discussions and readings into posters for the general public. This was actually the hardest part of the assignment because there were so many important things we wanted to include. However, we had to remember that the poster’s purpose was to cater to the general public who, unlike us, did not study Ireland for the last 9 weeks. We made two posters to display: one situating our archival materials and Irish music in the context of Irish history, and one about the use of A.I. (A big part of our class focused on A.I. experimentation, so we also wanted to display those findings as well).
Art Writing
Another cool skill that we both had to learn is art writing. We had to learn how to write short, informative, and attention-grabbing labels for each of our items. We not only talked about the art in general (such as the illustrator or author), but we also analyzed the song or language on the page. We even did an image analysis of one song that was accompanied by beautiful illustrations!
Pop-Up Event!
On the day of the event, Jackie Beckey, our special collections librarian, brought over our archival materials, and we set up our exhibit. After people had arrived, we listened to musicians play traditional Irish music for about 45 minutes. It was really cool to merge our classroom discussion with live music! We got a lot of people asking us questions about our research, which was really fun.
Conclusion
Overall, this event taught me so much not only about Irish music and identity, but also about how to be a public historian. I was able to interact with musicians, archivists and scholars to pull together an exhibit that touched on all the most important aspects of Irish identity. Opportunities like these remind me about what I love about Carleton: taking what you learn in the classroom and passionately presenting that to the general public (it’s also why I love ACE courses, even though this wasn’t one).
Kate (she/her) is a junior History and Theater double major from the Bay Area, California. She loves Carleton’s artsy community, and is involved in the Vocal Studies Program and occasionally the Experimental Theater Board when her fight choreography skills are in high demand. Kate’s favorite places on campus are the practice rooms, either in Myers or the Weitz, where she can sing or play the ukulele. She loves the campus during all the seasons but thinks nothing could compare to the beautiful colors of Northfield in the fall. When not in class, you can find Kate either petting the nearest cat or forcing her friends to watch bad movies in a study room.