‘A Much Deeper, Richer, More Visceral Way to Understand History’

The archives at my alma mater, Smith College, had this church-like feeling when you walked in, with a very high ceiling—and it was always dead silent. I can remember the first couple of times I went in there, being in awe.

There was one point while I was taking a poetry class that we went there to see Sylvia Plath’s papers, and I was a dramatic young woman at the time, so it was a particularly moving experience. Handling the material, seeing her handwriting in person—it transported me. Through looking at these things she interacted with directly, I could imagine her experience. I could see her doing the writing herself. 

It was the same for my capstone project at the end of college, for which I chose to work with scrapbooks and memory books created by previous Smith students. These very beautiful, highly tangible objects, with old, crinkly pages—some of which are falling apart—are stuffed with ephemera. Little handwritten cards, ribbons, pressed flowers, dance cards, programs for sports events or theater events. 

Being able to turn the pages and handle each tiny item enclosed made it easy to imagine the students putting them together. To look through these is to see their thought process as they tried to preserve a specific memory forever. 

There’s something incredibly special about looking at history through personal, lived experiences. Tiny details rather than the big picture. Working with primary source materials like these gives you a much deeper, richer, more visceral way to understand history.

One year, students in Freeden Blume Oeur’s Sociology of Higher Education class came to the archives to research Tufts. Their assignment required them to prepare a campus tour set in a specific time. Aside from it being a super fun assignment, it also exposed students first-hand to the idea that singular lived experiences make up our collective history.

When they visited TARC, it was so rewarding to watch their research process. Doing archival research comes with a lot of humbling moments where you don’t find something that you think will be there, so you have to pivot and reframe your question. There was plenty of that, but also some great eureka moments. 

At the end of the semester, the class invited some of our staff to watch their presentations, and I've never seen a student so enthusiastic about delivering a PowerPoint before. Each of them put their whole heart into it, and the other students asked them great questions afterward. 

They really committed to setting their tours at a point in time. So, some of them used music, photos, news clippings, and artwork, they talked about social classes, they talked about protests, they talked about political movements, all kinds of stuff. They totally immersed themselves, and I spent hours sitting at one of the little, tiny desks just smiling as I listened.

—Alexandra Bush, public services and instruction archivist at Tufts Archival Research Center

Our Tufts is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community and featured on both Tufts Now and Instagram.