The holiday season invites a look back on the year about to end, and this year’s accounting has been harder for me than in past years for many reasons, not least of which has to do with the Boston Summer Seminar.  Last September, after our second successful summer (more here), I was informed by my grants officer at the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA), our sponsoring organization, that changes in funding on their side had inadvertently orphaned the BSS.  Going forward, they have no way to fund the seminar at the same levels and in its current form.  Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, our seminar liaison librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I spent several months strategizing about what to do.  I also consulted BSS alumni. Administrators at my home institution, Hope College, worked mightily to find options.  Until earlier this month, I was hoping there would be some way to cobble together enough funding for another summer, so we could continue our work in the archives and our fascinating conversations.  Alas, this is not possible, at least not for the coming year.

So this is adieu to the BSS community – for now.  I have so many thanks to give: to Anna, to the MHS, to all our participating archivists and archives, and to our fabulous research teams of faculty and students.  I will keep the BSS website up for reference and as a record of what we have accomplished together.  For those following on Twitter, please know that in the new year I will be turning the BSS account into a professional account under my own name.

One more note:  Anna and I own the idea for the seminar, which means we may try to find another home for it in the future in a somewhat different form with another funding source.  We would be eager to hear of your interest going forward; feel free to contact Natalie Dykstra at ndykstra@hope.edu or Anna Clutterbuck-Cook at acook@masshist.org.

All of that is for the future.  For now, please accept our heartfelt thanks for making the seminar a success.  And we wish for you a productive and safe new year!

We are saddened to report that funding uncertainties and challenges have come up for the Boston Summer Seminar’s 2017 session.  We feel strongly about the need to resolve those issues before we post our call for proposals and recruit our next teams.  Thus, the application page will not be updated until the 2017 program is confirmed.

If the program is running next year, the deadline for proposals will most likely be February 15, 2017. We will post program updates here as soon as they are available.

In the meantime, here are a few comments from our 2016 alumni:

• “This was an extraordinarily valuable experience for the students and for me. So well thought-out and executed. Quite wonderful.”
• “Keep doing what you’re doing – it’s working!”
• “Professionally, this opportunity has jump-started a project I’ve been eager to develop…. As a mentor, I could not be more thrilled with watching my two students immerse themselves in every part of this program: both the intellectual and investigative work of digging through archives and the cultural opportunity to experience Boston.”

A week has gone by since our celebration evening at the conclusion of the second GLCA Boston Summer Seminar.  Our research teams from Albion College, Denison University, and Oberlin College are now our second group of alumni, the class of 2016.  This fall, we’ll be posting guest blogs from our alumni about their discoveries in the archives, their scholarship, and their experiences in Boston, so stay tuned!

Our three weeks together began with a cool blue Boston sky and temps more like spring than summer.  The three research teams arrived bright and early on Monday, June 6, ready to dive deep into the archives.  And did they ever!

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The Albion team, led by Dr. Marcy Sacks, conducted research on 19^th and 20^th century African-American lives in the North, as part of their project on Northern Black Lives Matter.  They worked at the Northeastern University Archives, Houghton Library, Schlesinger Library, and Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), our host for the seminar.

The Denison team, led by Dr. Trey Proctor, investigated trade in the 18^th and 19^th century Atlantic world and did so by looking at the trading routes of rum, as outlined in documents at the MHS and the Peabody Essex Museum Library; the trading of pharmacy knowledge and products, as recorded in medical records at the Countway Library; and the travels of ship captains’ wives, who confided in diaries now archived at the Schlesinger Library.

Finally, the Oberlin team, headed by Dr. Danielle Skeehan, investigated the paranormal and other haunted subjects of the 19^th century, decoding, for instance, fortune teller books at the Houghton Library and grappling with the meaning of mourning jewelry made of human hair, items which are archived at the MHS.

You can read more about the excellent research of each team here!

Our days were spent in the archives doing research, of course, but twice weekly we gathered together for a light meal around a large table in the MHS seminar room to talk with one another about archival discoveries.  With each successive day and conversation, the research projects got more nuanced and surprising.  One evening we went to the North End for a delicious Italian meal, then a walking tour of historic Boston, conducted by Boston by Foot.  For week two, we welcomed two speakers:  Dr. Kimberly Hamlin on Darwin and women’s rights; and Dr. Steven Berry on the many interpretive possibilities of ship logbooks.

I have a favorite line, written by Arlette Farge in her Allure of the Archives, about what can be found in the archives and how those documents can make the past loom very close:  “The archival document is a tear in the fabric of time, an unplanned glimpse offered into an unexpected event.”  During our evening conversations, we heard about some of those unplanned glimpses, celebrating what we’d accomplished on our last evening together on June 23.  As Elijah Bean, of Albion College, said so well that night: “who knew history could be THAT much fun?!”  It was hard to say goodbye.  We had bonded as a group, glad to be doing this work together in beautiful, historic Boston.

Putting together a seminar like this requires the enthusiasm and diligence of many people.  Thank you to our gracious host, the MHS, and to our MHS liaison librarian and archivist, Anna Clutterbuck-Cook.  Anna’s expertise makes the seminar both informative and smooth-running.  No one responds to email more quickly than she does.  Thank you to Laura Wulf for her spectacular photography – we all look better because of her talents.  A special thank you to our partnering archivists and institutions:  Giordana Mecagni and Michelle Romero at Northeastern University Archives; Irina Klyagin at the Houghton Library; Sarah Hutcheon at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University; and Emily Gustainis and Jack Eckert at the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Harvard Medical School.  I also want to thank my student webmasters, Hope Hancock (Hope College ’16) and Cullen Smith (Hope College ’17).

I first had the idea of opening a door for Midwestern researchers to explore archives in Boston in the fall of 2013, and Greg Wegner at the GLCA, our generous sponsor, was supportive from the start, as were my colleagues at Hope College, particularly in the English Department.  Thanks most of all to our fabulous, hard-working, fun-loving research teams this year.  Bravo to you all!  We’ll be eager to hear from you in the coming months and to learn how you turned your archival research into projects, stories, and scholarship.  Please tell your friends and colleagues about us.  We’d like to keep the conversation going!

~Natalie Dykstra, BSS Founding Director, Professor of English, Hope College

Summer!

The Boston Summer Seminar will be on summer hiatus until early September, when we’ll be back again with our bi-weekly posts, beginning with a call for proposals for June 2017.  Stay tuned! In the meantime, scroll through and read more about the seminar, about our work together, and about inspiration in the archives.  And we wish you lovely, restorative summer days.

Thursday, 23 June, 5:30-7:30pm

Massachusetts Historical Society

5:30pm – Dinner is served, meal catered by City Feed & Supply and Sweet

5:45pm – Congratulations, Anna Clutterbuck-Cook

6:00pm – Welcome, Natalie Dykstra

6:10pm – Albion College Team, Marcy Sacks, Elijah Bean, Corey Wheeler

6:30pm – Break

6:40pm – Denison College Team, Trey Proctor, Rachael Barrett, Maggie Gorski

7:00pm – Oberlin College Team, Danielle Skeehan, Amreen Ahmed, Sabina Sullivan

7:20pm – Farewell & Group Photos

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A very special thanks to…

Our 2016 Host

Massachusetts Historical Society

2016 Partner Institutions

Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library

Houghton Library

Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Sponsors

Great Lakes Colleges Association

Mellon Foundation

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We had a very productive second week at the Boston Summer Seminar!  Read all about the best archival finds so far from each of our research teams.

Albion College

I am researching Northern Black lives in the aftermath of the Civil War. My main goal has been to find anything pertaining to the normal day-to-day life of a black person. One primary source that has been exciting to me is a letter to from Charles Lenox Remond to George T. Downing.  The letter was included in the Degraase-Howard Papers, which are located at the Massachusetts Historical Society. George T. Downing was a businessman and civil rights leader who lived in Newport, Rhode Island after the Civil War. Downing and his colleagues had aspired to start a newspaper (which eventually becomes very popular) called the Christian Recorder. In his letter, Charles Lenox Remond tells Downing that he wants to be a part of the paper to “place his life and children’s life above want and suffering.” He says he doesn’t have any money to chip in but would offer his help in any way he can. While the letter was a great primary source, it did not offer much insight into the day-to-day life of an average black person. However, it did make me wonder if the newspaper they discussed would have information on the daily lives of black people in the North. I was excited to find out that I was able to access the Christian Recorder through a database at the Schlesinger Library.  The Recorder ended up being helpful because it gave me plenty of interesting information on everyday black life in the north.

~Corey Wheeler

 

My team and I wanted an opportunity to explore the daily life of the Northern Black population following the Civil War to the end of Reconstruction period (1865-1880). There is a plethora of information regarding the Southern Black lives during this time period, so we wanted to find out more about Northern Black lives.  My findings thus far have been scarce but nevertheless intriguing.  The New England Freedmen’s Aid Society, which was founded in the North and funded mostly by Northerners, helps shed some light on the schooling system.  However, their main focus was educating former slaves and most of their work was done in the South.  I also uncovered some information about the 54th regiment, which was one of the first official African-American regiments in the United States and formed during the Civil War.  Their Captain was a white man who went by the name of Luis F. Emilio, and I got the chance to look at his diaries.  Unfortunately, most of what I am reading is the voice of White America, and as we expected, it’s very difficult to find the voice of Black people during this time period. However, that is not stopping our team, and we are finding some very fascinating information.

~Elijah Bean

 

Oberlin College

Caroline Gilman compiles poetry quotes in her 1845 book Oracles from the Poets: a Fanciful Diversion from the Drawing Room, re-purposing them as tools of divination. As Gilman specifies in the preface, the book is used as follows: “The person who holds the book asks, for instance, what is your character? The individual questioned selects any one of the of the sixty answers under that head, say No. 3, and the questioner reads aloud the answer No. 3, which will be the oracle” (19). These answers are quotes in verse. The book was gifted to “Mary, from Aunt Lucretia,” in September of 1862 as inscribed within the front cover. Lucretia’s full name, Lucretia M. Fishe, is written in ink the top right-hand corner, with the addition of “-Percy” in pencil, suggesting that Lucretia married before giving the book to her niece. She likely no longer needed it, as the book is a tool for facilitating courtship as well as divination. The question categories are gendered with an eye towards romance, as in “What is the personal appearance of him who loves you?” Often the answers are wry, as with this couplet by Albert Pike: “A beard that would make a razor shake/ Unless its nerves were strong! (73).  Perhaps the gentleman in question would read the question to the lady, and she would be obliged to reply in this way, either making him uncomfortable or creating a joke between the two of them.

~Sabina Sullivan

 

One of the most interesting publications I’ve come across was Nettie Colburn Maynard’s memoirs, titled Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? and published in 1891.  Nettie was a medium highly trusted by Mary Todd Lincoln, and by association, President Lincoln. As Nettie puts it, “If he had not had faith in Spiritualism, he would not have connected himself with it, and would not have had any connections with it, especially in peculiarly dangerous times, while the fate of the Nation was in peril. Again, had he declared an open belief in the subject, he would have been pronounced insane and probably incarcerated” (93). The spirits embodied by Nettie spoke to Lincoln of the state of the nation in the midst of the Civil War, especially with regard to the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent problems faced by freedmen. Although her involvement in the formation of abolitionist policies is not mentioned in most history books, it’s clear that Nettie Colburn has had an impact on the spiritual community in America.

~Amreen Ahmed

 

There are a surprising number of “gypsies” in Harvard’s archives. They make fleeting appearances across genres and subject headings, stealing into the pages of nineteenth dissertations, plays, poems, newspapers, and trial accounts. They also, of course, appear as the supposed authors of quite a few “Fortune-tellers.” One of these authors is Margaret Finch, “Queen of the Norwood Gypsies,” and author of The little gipsy girl, or Universal fortune-teller, with charms and ceremonies for knowing future events (London 1816), The original Norwood gipsy; or, The fortune-teller’s sure guide, containing easy and simple rules on fortune-telling by cards, and by lines on the hand (Derby 1840), and The New Norwood Gipsy; or Art of Fortune Telling (London, 1840). These three texts establish Finch’s reputation as the “most remarkable Fortune-teller of modern times,” and provide an infallible guide to predicting future events, securing husbands, and close reading of moles, palms, marks, and spots. Her ability to dominate a nineteenth-century literary marketplace for texts that “unlock the secret Cabinet of Fate” is perhaps even more impressive considering the fact that she died in roughly 1740 at the age of 103 (or 108 or 109 depending on the account) and appears to be writing from the grave.

~Danielle Skeehan, Assistant Professor of English

Denison University

For the past ten days I’ve sat in the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library and looked at some really interesting materials. Take, for example, the Journal of John Denison Hartshorn: it was written from 1752-1756, and most likely ended with his death at the age of twenty. At this age, Hartshorn had done many things that the average twenty-year-old wouldn’t dream of ever having to do – he was an apprentice to an apothecary/physician. All of his daily goings-on he kept in his journal – a document that is now over 250 years old and that I got to hold in my hands. While it may not have been the most useful to my research, Hartshorn’s journal has definitely been one of the most interesting pieces of writing I’ve come across.

~Maggie Gorski

 

My portion of the project discusses how separation due to transatlantic travel affected marriage and family life. My most important primary source is the Gray Family Collection at the Schlesinger Library, which includes the family’s correspondence from 1812 to 1848. Joshua and Lucy Gray exchanged letters while he worked on merchant ships and she stayed home in Maine to run the family farm. Their sons later worked with their father; the collection also includes their letters. One highlight of my research so far is a pair of letters from late 1815. Lucy had been parenting a toddler alone for fifteen months. When Joshua told her his homecoming would be delayed, she responded: “my life… has been more like a widows than any thing.” Joshua wrote back that he “long[ed] to be at home” with her as well. Using these letters and others, I will discuss ways the family members expressed longing to see each other.  

~Rachael Barrett

 

Consensus holds that by the eighteenth century, Rhode Island merchants were the only colonial North Americans regularly engaged in the African slave trade, sending primarily rum to West Africa for slaves for sale to British plantations in the West Indies or South Carolina.  A letter from Eliphalet Fitch to Thomas Boylston II, an important Boston merchant engaged largely in the transportation of sugar, molasses and rum from Jamaica to England and the trade of sundries/textiles from England to Boston, suggests that at least one Boston merchant was trying his hand at the Africa slave trade as late as the 1770s. An unnamed ship owned by Boylston had apparently arrived in Kingston with 212 slaves at some point in 1771, prompting Mr. Fitch, Boylston’s agent in Jamaica, to propose the establishment a North American slave trading concern with merchants in Rhode Island. Scraps of evidence suggest that Boylston sent as many as nine slavers to Africa for slaves between 1771 and 1773, but provide no concrete information on the nature or outcome of those endeavors.

~Trey Proctor, Professor of History

We are excited to welcome our research teams to the second year of the GLCA Boston Summer Seminar.  We’ll be gathering for orientation at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Monday, June 6.  Food and coffee will be available at 9 a.m.

We have three research teams coming from three GLCA colleges:  Albion, Denison, and Oberlin.  We also welcome our archivists from five participating institutions, who will join us from time to time for our activities and conversations.   Our two seminar speakers are truly inspiring – we’ll be recording their talks and posting them on our website, so stayed tuned!

A few thoughts before our work commences.  One of the delights of research is a feeling of entering another world.  Your imagination brims with characters, overhead conversations, incidents, places, and colorful details.  Time at your desk seems to fly by.  Yet it’s also true that much of our work is solitary.  Doing primary source research takes patience and time – a lot of time.  And the payoffs are often delayed until later.  Sometimes a sense of connection to others can seem remote.  I remember my first summer doing research at the Massachusetts Historical Society.  I’d received a summer fellowship to examine the nineteenth-century photographs of Clover Adams, who became the subject of my first book.  I remember not knowing what to wear each morning.  I knew what to wear to class and to teach, but what to wear to the archive?  (As it turns out, archives are fairly casual.  We do encourage wearing layers for cool reading rooms, however.  And Anna Clutterbuck-Cook requests that no one dry socks on top of the microfilm machine, as one patron did after a rainy morning.)  I also remember the deep pleasure of doing my solitary work side-by-side with others doing their work, then meeting up for lunch or coffee to talk about what we’d discovered.  Come to think of it, I suppose the vivid feeling of relief in not being alone in my work is part of what inspired the Boston Summer Seminar.

And so, at this year’s Seminar we’ll be doing our work together.  I know I speak for everyone here at the MHS and our other archivists: we can’t wait to get started!

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~Natalie Dykstra, BSS Director

As you prepare for your three-week residency in Boston, chances are you’re excited not only about your research but also about exploring the city! Compared with the sprawling cities of the Midwest, you will likely find Boston a compact and eminently walkable city with excellent public transit both within the city (MBTA buses and subway — “the T”) and across the region (Amtrak, commuter rail, and buses). Below is a sampling of some of the events on offer during your stay here in “the Hub.”

Week One

If you arrive in Boston the weekend before orientation (June 4-5), check out the Coolidge Corner Arts Festival (Coolidge Corner stop on the Green Line “C” branch) and/or the Cambridge River Arts Festival (a short walk from Kendall Square). On Sunday, the free Beacon Hill Art Walk will give you a chance to explore the heart of the original Boston peninsula.

June is Pride month, and the week of June 5-11 culminates in the Boston Pride Festival and Parade on Saturday, June 11. The parade route passes through the heart of central Boston from Copley Square to the Boston Common to the Government Center plaza, where many festival events are held. Check out the official calendar for a full list of LGBTQ-themed events throughout your time in Boston.

Week Two

On Sunday, June 12 you can catch the Boston Dragon Boat Festival on the banks of the Charles River.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is offering one of their world-famous Boston Pops concerts on June 14-15.  If you enjoy live theatre, the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge is performing Twelfth Night June 9 through the end of the month.  On Saturday, June 18 you can attend the 9th Annual Fete de la Musique/Make Music Harvard Square event (check out last year’s lineup here).

Week Three

Sunday, June 19 will be the final day of GuitarFest XI at New England Conservatory, which runs June 15-19. Special exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston include Megacities Asia, #TechStyle, and Pairing Picasso, all which will be on display throughout June. Wednesday nights the MFA is open until 10pm and admission after 4pm is by “voluntary contribution” (student tickets are typically $23).

And finally, if you’re staying a day or two after the BSS16 program ends, the Roxbury International Film Festival (June 22-July 1) will be taking place at the Museum of Fine Arts, showcasing work by and about people of color from around the world.

Useful Boston Websites

• Boston.com
• The Boston Globe
• @BostonTweet
• MBTA.com (transit schedules, maps, and updates)
• WBUR
• Universal Hub

Related Posts From 2015

• Boston Tips: Lunch Spots
  Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  (museums, libraries, churches)
  Boston Tips: Weekends In and Around Boston

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~ Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, MHS Liaison Librarian

Sebastian Smee, the witty, erudite, and Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for the Boston Globe, reminded readers in this morning’s paper to “go outside” and look.  Look.  That’s been hard to do this past week because of the almost constant rain.  But he’s right.  What he calls the “shrieking green” of spring has arrived.  He goes on to say that “to contemplate the sheer surface area of green matter that appears out of nowhere in this compressed time is to get a jolt of what the old Romantics called ‘the sublime.’”*

At this time of year, when colleges are finishing up their semesters, I often think of a scene from a book I published in 2012.  In the 1870s, Henry Adams, historian and grandson of presidents, would escape to Boston’s North Shore at the beginning of every summer after his year teaching history to some 200 students at Harvard.  Grading all those final exams made his eyes and hands and back ache.  He and his wife, Clover, would leave their townhouse on Marlborough St. for their summer home in Beverly Farms, with its covered porches and sprawling garden.  Once, in early June, he confessed to a friend:  “I could write a sonnet on the pleasures of picking up stones out of one’s lawn.” In the afternoons, he liked to go tramping through the forests and rocky hills near the shore, with its sweet breezes.  He’d find a sheltered spot, under a canopy of newly green trees to, as he said, “lay down on my back till dinner time,” thinking of nothing at all.  For anyone who’s survived a long teaching year in a cloudy part of the country – well, this scene captures the longing of early spring pretty well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about inspiration – where it comes from, why it’s sometimes abundant, at other times in short supply, and where I’ve found it lately.  The early purple and yellow flowers peeking up in my garden are helping.  Here’s a shortlist of what else has been helping.

Three Favorite Research Resources:

• If you’re about to launch into your summer research projects, check out ArchiveGrid, a go-to database that allows you to limit your search of archives to those in your city or region.
• Historical newspapers: My current project requires I scour through historical newspapers, so I was particularly glad when this resource recently became available from the Library of Congress.
• There was a lot of press when the New York Public Library announced earlier this year that they’d digitized many thousands of items in their special collections and made these available in a beautifully designed and easy-to-use site. As of today, it’s up to 678,988 items!  Best of all, over 180,000 are in the public domain.

Two Favorite Books:

• The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal.
  I can’t stop thinking about this remarkable book, which I just finished.  It’s a book that gets into your dreams.  The story follows a collection of 264 netsuke, small Japanese carvings made from ivory or chestnut wood, first collected by de Waal’s Jewish banking ancestor in 1870s Paris, then sent to Vienna at the turn-of-century through WWI and Germany’s takeover of Austria at the beginning of WWII, then to postwar Tokyo and finally present-day London, where de Waal is a renowned porcelain ceramicist. Somehow this sweeping story that moves across decades and continents is exquisitely intimate.  The reader is brought very close-up to specific moments, a character’s gesture, a clearing of the throat, not unlike tumbling the tiny netsuke in your hand.

• A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, by Rachel Cohen. Sometimes, when I’m particularly stuck in my own writing, I dip into Cohen’s book for a chapter or two to get nourished both by the stories she tells of friendship between artists and writers and the way she tells the stories – her cool-eyed compassion, her supple style, how she pays attention to the smallest detail of her subjects’ lives. The chapter on Mark Twain’s friendship with General Grant and the final scene of one writer mourning the death of another – Twain favorably compared Grant’s memoirs to Caesar’s Commentaries – are unforgettable.   I have a few books I always keep on a shelf near my desk; this is one of them.

Spring at last is here, go outside, LOOK, and then enjoy what inspires you – summer is near!

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*Sebastian Smee, 5/6/2016,  The Boston Globe.

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~Natalie Dykstra, BSS Director

I was drawn to the Boston Summer Seminar (BSS) because of my “extreme enthusiasm” for the writing and researching process in my music senior seminar with Dr. Julia Randel at Hope College.  One day, as she was helping me figure out how to fit my undying love of opera into my final research paper, she asked me to be part of her research team in Boston for the 2015 inaugural summer. I quickly cleared my schedule.

Before I knew it, I was writing the proposal, booking the ticket, and boarding the plane for Boston.

What words can I use to begin? There are too many words. I could talk about my day on arrival, the extraordinary staff and teachers who worked with us, my Boston life, shops I went to and food I ate, the numerous museums we visited, navigating the subways, the BSS guest speakers, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and much more.  But before I get carried away, let me introduce myself and my research.

My name is Genevieve Janvrin; I am a recent graduate (December 2015) with a degree in Instrumental Music Education. I attended BSS 2015 on Hope College’s research team with two fabulous people: Dr. Julia Randel, chair of the music department at Hope, professor extraordinaire, and lead researcher; and Hannah Jacobsma, dancer, English major, fellow researcher, and friend.  Our team worked closely with Irina Klyagin, the BSS archivist liaison at the Houghton Library. A manuscript cataloger, Irina is an expert on Russian literature, the history of dance, and Russian and European theatre.  She gave us an exclusive tour of the vaults below the library as well as helped us navigate the Harvard research database. Irina and I chatted often about how my research was going and which collections were worth looking at and/or beneficial to my research. Overall, she has a lifetime of knowledge on our research topics.

The Original Research Plan

I planned to assist Dr. Julia Randel with her project, “Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Balanchine & Ballet Russe Tour.” She had shared a 1916 newspaper article from The Grand Rapids Press in a music history course I had taken the previous year. The article focused on the Ballet Russe, a Russian troupe of dancers that were touring in the United States in 1916-1917. The article highlighted the Ballet Russe’s performance of Schéhérazade, a sensual contemporary ballet with music by the famous Russian composer, Rimsky-Korsakov. I was enthralled, and slightly baffled, with the image of 1916 Grand Rapids audiences rushing to the theatre to see this risqué, exotic, and lavish performance! When I found out that Grand Rapids (and other U.S. cities like Boston) audiences fell in love with the performance, I was hooked on the Ballet Russe’s fascinating and slightly strange stateside narrative. I wanted to find evidence of the reception of the Ballet Russe Tour in Boston and Grand Rapids and the influence that the company had with the American public.

The New Research Plan

Well, my plan changed in the second week of research.

I mean I shifted my focus. I became completely fascinated with the people I was learning about and the stories I read in the archival files. For instance, I was learning about Diaghilev (the owner of the company) and the letters he exchanged with other people along the way: Nijinsky, a famous dancer linked to the Ballet Russe; Lydia Sokolova, one of the dancers with an unusual memoir from the U.S. Tour; the interesting travel stories from other dancers; the reception of Schéhérazade; the fan mail and love letters from audience members across the nation; the ads about the group coming to various U.S. cities; and the original Bakst paintings and drawings (an artist that followed the group and traced their performances).

In the quiet, small, securely locked research room at Houghton, I reveled in chasing the history of the whole undertaking of the 1916-1917 Ballet Russe American Tour. Through autobiographies, ads and articles in newspapers, photograph collections, books, paintings, drawings, stock “glamour” photos of the lead dancers, and a viewing of a few films, I began slowly piecing together the parts from the Tour. In the second week, I discovered something that I thought should have been included in this vast collection.

No one had put together a calendar of the Ballet Russe Tour, which might document exactly where the group went and when.  Dr. Randel caught on to my enthusiasm and passion for the subject and encouraged me to keep going. I wanted to find out everything I could: first-hand accounts of the show; what shifted in American culture after the Russian Ballet visited; why performances changed from night to night; where they went when not performing; why they picked the dances they did, and the life of a dancer on the Tour. I made the most of my time and got down as much as I could. On the Thursday evening at the close of the seminar, I gave a funny speech, presented the calendar, ate some fantastic food, and said my goodbyes. I boarded a plane the next day back to Chicago and left my research behind.

An Impactful Experience

Yet my research still lives within me. I still question why American audiences fell in love with the Ballet Russe Tour. I also wonder if I could trace the 1920s American fashion blitz to the costumes worn by the Ballet Russe while they were on tour. Additionally, I would love to study Nijinsky’s dancing career and his chaotic life during the troupe’s second tour.

Here is my point: I got carried away with the stories and the questions. I got carried away with the quiet Houghton atmosphere and the kind souls, both living and dead, who guided me. I got carried away with Boston. My time at MHS, Houghton, and Harvard helped formulate a desire for the future:  I want to be a researcher.

And despite the stones I left unturned, I definitely found a few great jewels.

Jewel 1:  Boston is really beautiful.
The Charles River cools off the city on hot days, when the sun beams down and the summer preppy clothes come out. Even in the early rainy days when I was there, the cobblestone pavement at Harvard shines, and the campus buzzes with international and domestic students all wanting to get a glimpse of life as a Harvard student. The subway made getting around easy and affordable.  I enjoyed finding little places to grab lunch or dinner with other research teams, and booking weekend activities (the Boston Aquarium and the Freedom Trail are quite fun) around the city that let me be a tourist, instead of a student. It was hard leaving such a historically significant city.

For my living situation, my father had a work colleague that I was fortunate to stay with for the duration of the program in Boston’s hilltop district, Beacon Hill. What a cool adventure. While I was living on “the Hill” for three weeks, I got to eat a few fancy meals, enjoy a walking tour of Boston and Concord from a true Bostonian, brush past a senator’s home, go sailing on the Boston River, and more; it was an experience I will not forget.

Jewel 2: Hannah, Julia, and Irina.
Julia kept encouraging both Hannah and I in our long research days, and Irina gave us a unique look at Houghton’s collections as well as wise advice. Hannah was a great research friend, lunch buddy, and listener. It was so wonderful to have these three people at my side during those hard research days when focusing on transcribing a handwritten letter seemed impossible.

Jewel 3: Natalie Dykstra, Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
What a great team. Natalie, Anna, and the MHS put together dinners (and went to extreme lengths to ensure gluten-free meals for me). They brought in powerhouse guest speakers who helped me learn how to be a better researcher and led discussions that ensured we all shared in each other’s research journey.

Jewel 4: I want to be a researcher now.
I loved the work I did and how it opened up my mind to the possibilities of future research. I haven’t quite found my start since graduation and gaining my teaching certificate, but I am eager to jump into research in the near future.

Addendum:
To the 2016 Boston Summer Seminar Attendees:  The BSS is a fantastic find – congratulations!  I hope in all of your wandering of the city, in all of your research, in all of your tweeting #BSS16life, you get a little carried away, just as I did. J

Best of luck,
Genevieve

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~ Genevieve Janvrin, BSS Alum 2015, Hope College graduate 2015