Alongside her love of travel, history, and microfilm, humanities librarian Erin Hvizdak holds a special place in her heart \u2013 and her research \u2013 for preserving stories of everyday women that are often lost in archives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so much we don\u2019t know about the history of women because the sources haven\u2019t been preserved, they haven\u2019t been highlighted, they haven\u2019t been made accessible,\u201d Hvizdak said. \u201cWhile this has greatly improved in recent decades, we still have a long way to go.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This summer, she will pursue her research on these women in Victoria, British Columbia, after recently receiving a Digital Humanities Summer Institute<\/a> scholarship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The award covers the cost of a workshop in June, where Hvizdak will learn about digital storytelling and how to build a digital community exhibit for her research. She also plans to eat \u201cso many oysters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was kind of an honor. It makes me feel like I\u2019m on the right track,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like a real historian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hvizdak\u2019s research follows two women from the Atlantic world in the 19th century. Although Solitude had only one paragraph to her name in 1860, she became a local legend in French Guadeloupe, Hvizdak said. In 1802, she led a group of enslaved people in a revolt against Napoleon\u2019s attempt to reinstate slavery on the island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hvizdak is also studying Marie Laveau, a Voodoo priestess from New Orleans. Despite little archival evidence of her past, Laveau is a prominent figure in local communities, as well as being featured on a season of \u201cAmerican Horror Story,\u201d in songs, and in bars, Hvizdak said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Prior to her trip to Victoria, Hvizdak will search New Orleans archives for traces of Laveau, trying to understand why and how people created her various portrayals. However, Hvizdak said she will still make time for oysters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just think it\u2019s important to get the stories out there and pull them all together in one space so that people can use them as a learning tool. They can see how women are represented throughout time and what impact this continues to have on the status of women,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hvizdak\u2019s research of women\u2019s stories extends to her work with students, faculty, and the public at WSU Libraries as well, she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This semester, Hvizdak helped Anne Schobelock, a second-year master\u2019s student in the history department, search for feminist periodicals from Dallas and Houston, Texas, in the 1970s. Despite the texts being scattered and difficult to find \u2013 they were only published for five years at a time \u2013 Hvizdak reached out to Northwestern University and Eastern Washington University on Schobelock\u2019s behalf. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs graduate students in history, we\u2019re being trained to write and read and interpret documents, but we haven\u2019t been trained to navigate the archives,\u201d Schobelock said. \u201cErin is such a good connection between those two worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only did Schobelock see Hvizdak throughout her thesis research, but she is studying alongside her as well. Since 2020, Hvizdak has been working toward her master\u2019s degree in history one class at a time. Although passing classes is not \u201cmake or break\u201d for her since she already has a job, Schobelock said it is clear Hvizdak cares about her education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe had to make a syllabus this week, and she\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019ve been working on this for weeks!\u2019 The rest of us were like \u201coh, we\u2019ll get it done,\u2019 so I can tell she\u2019s invested \u2026 because she cares,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite sacrificing her freedom on the weekends for a chance at formal learning, Hvizdak said she loves getting to know students outside the library on a more personal level as well as diving into her research topic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Online Biographical Dictionary of the Women\u2019s Suffrage Movement in the United States,<\/a> an open-access database, sparked her interest in pursuing her master\u2019s degree, she said. The project assigned names of unknown women to volunteers, asking them to find anything they could about the women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For her volunteer effort, Hvizdak ordered microfilm to find niche information on the women \u2013 something she could spend hours talking about, she said with a laugh. Finding hidden collections in these small packages, which were increased in use during World War II to save documents from being destroyed, is a unique interest of hers. When she brings students into the microfilm room<\/a> in the libraries\u2019 Dimensions Lab<\/a>, they \u201cget really into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hvizdak completed six entries and said she found it inspiring to read about women working behind the scenes to build community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n WSU encourages professional development and provides the support system necessary to complete her master\u2019s degree or attend conferences, which she is very lucky to have, Hvizdak said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy the end of the semester, I\u2019m like, \u2018oh my god, I\u2019m dead, but let\u2019s do it again,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s important work to do, bringing new stories to light, so if that\u2019s how I contribute to society, that\u2019s how I contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alongside her love of travel, history, and microfilm, humanities librarian Erin Hvizdak holds a special place in her heart \u2013 and her research \u2013 for preserving stories of everyday women that are often lost in archives. \u201cThere\u2019s so much we don\u2019t know about the history of women because the sources haven\u2019t been preserved, they haven\u2019t […]","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,52,53,54,55,56],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-browse","tag-digital-humanities-summer-institute","tag-erin-hvizdak","tag-humanities","tag-research","tag-womens-studies","tag-wsu-libraries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}