Research day at my old stomping grounds, Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago; a good reminder to finish organizing the Black at Bryn Mawr project files for the Bryn Mawr College Archives before my departure.
Check out my contribution to the Notches Back to School Special: Introducing Students to the History of Sexuality. What strategies for introducing your students to the historical study of sexuality have you used?
How does queer studies engage with the archive? Since 2007, students and faculty affiliated with the University of Chicago Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality have worked to build archival collections documenting the experiences of women and LGBTQ individuals and communities at UChicago. This talk gives a brief history of the project’s origins in feminist and women’s history, and addresses what it means to once-marginalized communities to have a place in the University archives.
Last month, I had the chance to speak about our work creating a LGBTQ archive on campus for the University of Chicago’s annual Humanities Day celebrations. Watch, learn, and contribute to our project:
This week, join graduate students and faculty at the University of Chicago conference “Invisible Designs: New Perspectives on Race and Consumer Capitalism,” organized by Ph.D. students Chris Dingwall and Korey Garibaldi. From the conference website:
This conference takes design as an object and a theme to gain new perspective on the study of race in American consumer society. How has racialized imagery sustained the work of capitalism and American dreams of the “good life”? Considering design in relation to problems of self-fashioning, material culture, immigration, urban and suburban development, and decorative commodities, we will engage with the latest scholarly conversations about race and capitalism and explore paths for future inquiry. Ultimately the conference aims to uncover the otherwise “invisible” cultural logics and historical processes that have woven racial difference into the fabric of American life.
I’ll be presenting some preliminary research on first communion portrait photography and the material culture of Nuyorican migration as part of the panel “Life Design” on Thursday morning, October 24. The conference and related exhibition, “Race and the Design of American Life,” will take place at Special Collections Research Center at Regenstein Library.
View the full schedule and register online. [link]
This Thursday, May 2, I will speak about my research on nineteenth-century U.S. religious publishing and women readers as part of the University of Chicago’s Office of Graduate Student Affairs tour of Special Collections Research Center. For more on the evening’s program, visit Expose Yourself!
Register for the event online here.
Given my various research interests, I’m thrilled to see The University of Chicago Magazine feature on my LGBT history course paired with an article on Catholic women’s history in The Core supplement for Jan-Feb/13.
Did you know that Special Collections Research Center has a great collection of pulp novels? The University of Chicago Magazine writer Betsy Station profiles one of my favorite primary source assignments in the Jan-Feb/13 “Original Source” column: “Queer Review.”
Monica L. Mercado, Ph.D. 