About on Emma Stewart

Documenting Clemson University's AAUW

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Interacting with physical archives will always be part of the historian’s process. Despite the plethora of online sources, the vast majority are not available digitally. Additionally, there are certain aspects of place-based research, as well the handling of physical documents, that cannot be replicated with online databases. Other considerations, such as the inaccuray of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) must also be taken into consideration.

Traveling to an archive can be expensive, and therefore inaccessible to many researchers. However, the experience of travel, especially outside of one’s own country, gives the researcher more context, cultural awareness, and insight into the present-day implications of the history they study.¹ Additionally, the process of sifting through folders and boxes of documents often forces the researcher to notice things they would otherwise miss, especially in a keyword search.²

CV

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Curriculum Vitae

Hardin Hall 001 — Clemson University

estewa7@clemson.edu

Education

Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Ph.D. Student, Digital History, expected 2030

Fields: United States History; Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and Digital History

Advisor: Dr. Amanda Regan

University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK

MA, History – “Back to the Land of Exclusion: A History of Lesbian Separatism, Community, and Trans Marginalization in the United States, 1970s-2020s” – Passed with Distinction, 2025

Advisor: Dr. Lindsey Churchill

Projects

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Northwest Arkansas Women’s Oral History Project

In 2021 and 2022, I established a connection with a women's community in Northwest Arkansas and conducted oral history interviews with approximately 20 individuals for my thesis research. These women shared their life stories with particular attention to their contribution to various activist movements. Ranging in age from early 60s to early 90s, they each have unique insight to offer on a range of historical moments. This project touches on environmental, feminist, and LGBTQ+ movements. Their stories are now preserved at the Herland Archive and some are available for viewing on the OKC Metropolitan Library System's YouTube.

Herland Archive Digitization

From 2022-2025, I worked on a project funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to digitize the Herland Archive's rare collection of feminist periodicals housed at the University of Central Oklahoma's Women's Research Center and BGLTQ+ Student Center. I was one of a handful of students who scanned and created metadata for over 40,000 pages of the collection. The entire process introduced me to the labor behind digitization. I learned how to scan documents, compress files, and run OCR to create text-searchable PDFs suitable for public access. The digital archive is housed on the ShareOK website and can be accessed here.

Southern Mill Archive

In Spring 2026, I participated in the Local History and Digital Projects course at Clemson University, which conducted deep research on southern textile mills in the Piedmont region. As part of the class, I conducted archival research at the Strom Thurmond Institute and created an online exhibit documenting paternalism and employee surveillance in the Clifton Manufacturing Company from 1940-1942. This course deepened my understanding of how to build an online archive using the content management system Omeka. My exhibit can be found here.