Projects

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.

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.

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.