I’m finding it difficult

Guys it’s the time of year that we have the interns
I’m usually okay with that.

But we have this one that is testing my patience as a human being and I’m about to start throwing things.

IF AOBA OFFERED SOME MERCHANDISE (SHIRTS, BANDANAS, TOTES, PATCHES), WOULD YOU BUY IT? WHAT POSTS WOULD YOU WANT TO SEE TURNED INTO MERCH?

- THE INTERNS

Kelly, Sarah’s social media marketing intern, here!

Tomorrow is my last day at Geek & Sundry and I just wanted to leave some love here. I had an amazing time here and this company is fantastic. They treat you like one of them, never once have I felt inferior or unwelcome. As a marketing intern, I have learned so much and really feel like I had the best possible internship experience. I aided in the new Geek Facts Twitter & Tumblr campaign, which became successful, and I helped think of an idea for a fan art contest.

I was given the chance and opportunity to get involved with the company and I felt as though my ideas were valued; never once did I feel as though I was being ignored or anything. 

I highly recommend interning at Geek & Sundry. You should really apply. I’m sad that tomorrow is my last day, but I’m also grateful that I had the chance to have this experience. 

Much love to Geek & Sundry staff, fans, and stars,
Kelly.

P.S. Wil and Felicia are so nice. I fan girled SO hard internally when I met them. Wil finally learned my name on the last day. 

<3 

geekandsundry

Meet archives intern Jamee Pritchard, a first-year Ph.D. student in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies.  

What is your educational background, area of study, and research interests?

I have master’s degrees in public history and library and information science and a graduate certificate in women’s and gender studies. Very broadly, my area of study is Black women’s history. Within that field, I explore Black feminisms and expressive cultures that focus primarily on print media from the 20th and early 21st century. A lot of my research is about Black women as cultural producers and cultural readers. I seek to understand how writers (re)construct representations of Black womanhood and girlhood within popular print culture. Further, I examine how Black readers engage with this writing in relation to their cultural, collective, and individual identity construction and expression. 

Tell us about your thesis and/or field work.

My master’s thesis was a critical history of Black Romance novels from 1980 to 2010. I explored the traditional romance publishing market and the obstacles that Black romance writers faced in a predominantly white literary space that had already established a dominant structure to the romance novel. I analyzed how Black romance writers disrupted that model in their exploration of Black life, and how Black romance readers engaged with these novels. As I’ve just started my Ph.D. program, my doctoral research is a work in progress. I’m developing a project this semester that looks at Black girlhood in young adult popular fiction. I’d love to focus on the impact of YA speculative fiction on representations of Black diasporic girlhoods and really get into the audience reception of these novels through some qualitative research. 

What draws you to the archives, special collections, and libraries profession?

The gaps, silences, and erasures of Black women (and other women of color) in the archive, particularly archives within predominantly white institutions, draw me to the profession. What does it mean that our women’s and feminist history collections primarily focus on one historical perspective? What does it mean that many classic Black feminist texts are part of the circulating collection rather than curated within archives or special collections? What does it mean when archival and library staffs lack racial and cultural diversity? In answering these questions, I am interpreting those gaps, silences, and erasures within the archive and, more broadly, the field of libraries, archives, special collections, and museums. My scholarship, through exhibit curation, Tumblr posts, finding aids, academic papers, etc., interprets the value that traditional cultural institutions attribute to the collection and preservation of marginalized histories, and hopefully, it disrupts the existing power structures within these institutions. My professional goals are very selfish, as I simply want to see myself existing in history, and that starts in the archives. 

What is your favorite collection within the archive or the most interesting record you’ve come across? 

I don’t have a favorite collection in our archive, but I have favorite records. The first is a program from the 1981 Miss Black America of Milwaukee pageant. Vel Phillips was a judge, and the program is found in her collection (Milwaukee Mss 231).  The second item is found in UWM Special Collections. It’s a literary journal published in 1979 called Conditions: Five, the black women’s issue. Co-edited by Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel, it is the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writings in the United States. I love the piece called “On Roses and Thorns” by Janet Singleton. 

What are you working on now?

I’m processing a small collection for the Black Nurses Association and will move on to processing a collection for the Filipino Nurses Association after that. I’m also working on some outreach through Tumblr posts.

What’s something surprising you’ve learned about the profession (or yourself as an archivist) since you’ve started working at UWM Archives?

Coming into the archives I thought I’d really enjoy the reference aspect of it, which I do, as some reference requests take me on an amazing historical journey, but I’ve learned that I love educational outreach and engagement even more. I really enjoy researching our collections and creating materials and media that make them accessible to students, faculty, staff, and community members. 

UWM Archives has some new faces for the academic year, and we’d like to introduce them to you in this weekly series. Every Monday, for the next 3 weeks, we’ll highlight one of our new interns. They’ll describe their education, research, and professional interests as well as share their experience working at UWM Archives.

We start off this series with intern Chloe Joy, a first-year graduate student in the coordinated master’s degree program for Art History and Library and Information Science. 

What is your area of study and research interests?

I’m interested in gender studies in an art historical context (particularly during the Renaissance). I’m also interested in collection management, art preservation, and folk arts such as quilting and other textiles! I haven’t quite begun my thesis, but my topic is centered around art depicting pregnancy, sexuality, and maternity during the Italian Renaissance.

What draws you to the archives and special collections profession?

I’m very drawn to the way archives and special collections tell stories and preserve them for generations to come. I get emotionally invested in some of the records I work with, and I find it fascinating to explore people’s journeys through the records we maintain in archives. I have been so lucky to spend time with collections, and I’m dedicated to making archives and special collections accessible for all people, regardless of any status.

What is your favorite collection within UWM Archives or most interesting record/collection that you’ve come across?

I have a degree in Gender Studies, so I really love the collections we have in the archive regarding feminism, women’s history, and the LGBTQ+ community within Milwaukee. I recently processed a new addition to the Wisconsin Women Artists archival collection and had a lot of fun reading through the project documentation (UWM Manuscript Collection 3). The collection contains a lot of interviews with women artists around Wisconsin, on their inspirations, mediums, and artistic processes, which was so cool to read about.

What are you working on now for UWM Archives?

I’m currently working on processing material from UW-Washington County, we’re essentially completing and verifying the description of the collection and removing duplicates that have popped up.

What’s something surprising you’ve learned about the archival profession since you’ve started working at UWM Archives?

One of the biggest things I’ve learned about the profession since working in archives and special collections is truly how important accessibility and diversity are in collections, and how much responsibility those who process and care for archives and other collections have in making sure representation is happening.

So many archival collections have been preserved and controlled by privileged folks in power, and marginalized histories are so often pushed to the side. Archivists now have a duty to foster those marginalized histories and address their own biases within the profession. Working in archives requires a lot of responsibility and intentionality in that regard, since we are uniquely positioned in the role of deciding (to some degree) which stories get preserved, and which do not.