History That She Wrote

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) contributes funds from athletics to provide scholarship to undergraduates via the Inter-institutional Academic Collaborative (ACC-IAC). The ACC-IAC Fellowship Program in Creativity and Innovation supports research and creative endeavors in the summer months, and provides Wake Forest University students with the opportunity to collaborate with a professor. Students applying for the intensive summer scholarship must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0. 

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The ACC-IAC Fellowship supported and funded my creative summer research, History That She Wrote: how objects portray the emancipation of Italian American Women. The objective of my research was to evoke the voices of Italian American women by photographing objects of importance to their lives. I used the ACC IAC fellowship funds to travel domestically to Mullins (SC), Washington (D.C.), New York City (NY), Ansonia (CT), and Winston-Salem (NC), all places with prominent Italian American communities. Families in each city met with me and allowed me to photograph objects of importance to them and the women of their family that came before them. These objects range from lost traditions, such as needlework, to objects of advanced careers, such as stethoscopes. All objects exhibit narratives of the women that made or used the objects. The objects, collectively, illustrate how women transferred from occupancies of the domestic space to the outside sphere of a new culture in the New World. For many women, we can clearly see how the objects used for their occupations translate their traditional values to newfound discovery of agency within American culture. Photographing the objects created a binary dialogue, one of the old significance of the objects, and one of how it lives on in memory and in use. Both dialogues, in turn, are captured in the photographs. Objects tell old stories now in a new creative way, a way in which tradition meets modernity, and a way in which nostalgia binds communities and families.

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My hope for this project is not only to redefine history, but encourage others to appreciate the objects they have, the important people they have in their life, and their ability to always write their own story through objects and through action. I am so thankful for this once in a lifetime opportunity that helped me grow as a student and as a woman.