In a time of remote learning, courses designed to have a “hands on” approach to research have adapted significantly to the current circumstances. This is the case for Professor Brittanie Weatherbie Greco and the students in ENGL 236: Reading, Writing and the Archives: Literary Boston, a course developed with the goal of helping students research and analyze primary source materials in Boston’s archives. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, this class has been able to adapt to the remote setting with a number of activities, including a fun and insightful virtual visit to the Boston Athenæum where Hannah Weisman, the Director of Education, gave a tour and demonstrated to the students how the physical space of a library archive can itself be part of the research as something to be “read.”

Weisman showed the students around each floor with pictures and descriptions, explaining that the library began collecting books at its founding in 1807 and many of them remain on open shelves. This means students who study there have the opportunity to do primary text research on their own time. Though the library is private, membership is open to everyone, and students are welcome to visit, do research, and request appointments. The Athenæum is one of the oldest independent libraries in the country, and its collections reveal the unique mission and purpose of the organization. Some of the Athenæum’s most noteworthy collections include a copy of the “Nuremberg Chronicle,” a full run of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator, George Washington’s copy of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” first editions of Phillis Wheatley’s poems, and other artifacts that demonstrate Boston’s history.

With this background in mind, the class was able to look at a specific item to practice their research skills: the diary of Ezekiel Price 1775-76, donated to the library by a descendent in 1869. This diary documents the everyday life of a man who lived in and eventually evacuated from Boston during the British occupation. Weisman pulled the diary out of its protective case and explained the process that conservators go through to remove the original binding of the book and preserve the pages. She asked students to consider books not only as texts but as historical artifacts, and in this case, she opened to the diary entry July 4, 1776 and asked students what it said. “Went to Boston—Liberty given for to inoculate for the small pox: many began upon it this afternoon,” students read aloud. From this single entry they understood that news of American independence did not take place on the first fourth of July, and the most noteworthy matter for Bostonians in 1776 was a smallpox outbreak. On July 13, students deciphered this entry from Price: “Went to Boston—Our children are very comfortable. The mail from New York brings the Declaration of the Continental Congress for Independence.” Directly following this, students laughed at the entry for July 14: “A pleasant day—nothing remarkable.” This was just one example of how students can use documents from a specific historical period to conduct research on a specific topic, and there are a wealth of documents available to them at the Athenæum.

This tour gave students an introduction to a rich cultural heritage site and archive, available to them now and for their future studies as they look forward to being local students in Boston again. As it says in the syllabus, the purpose of the course is for students to interpret letters, diaries, literature, journals, books, publications, short stories, and other original primary source material from the Boston area in order to discover the social and cultural moments in which they were created. The goal is not just to hone the technical skills required to locate and describe primary sources, but also to analyze sources as deeply and as thoroughly as possible, through reading and writing exercises. The Athenæum visit is important for the class to meet these goals because, as Professor Greco said, “not only does the library have distinct cultural significance, but it is a Boston landmark and part of the storytelling within Boston history.”

Capturing the storytelling of Boston fits into the course’s other exciting assignments and projects, including a Boston-based history project, an oral history project, and consulting the Healey Library’s University Archives and Special Collections to better understand the mission and focus of the university. Part of the course’s aim is to examine what is left out of an archive and a story, as archives are compiled and built with a specific mission in mind, as is the case for the digital archives students access in this course through the UASC and the Athenæum, among others. From this recognition, students will begin to construct stories of their own for their individual interests. Whether or not they go on to do archival work in the future, this humanities course develops the necessary skills of analysis, inquiry, and conceptual thinking that will serve students well in a range of career choices.

In a year where most of the world has been confined to their homes, there has never been a greater understanding of the importance of the spaces we occupy. For Professor Greco’s course, the space of the Boston Athenæum is noteworthy not only for the significant archival work that is possible there, but for the ways in which being in that space can contribute to one’s understanding of history and what is curated, said, and left unsaid. The space lends itself to ENGL 236’s goal of introducing students to the physical setting of archival research and understanding the story that is told through an archive’s physical space and curated collection.