Special Projects: from the archives

I have a thing for archives, apparently. 

During my time as a news editor at The Student Life, the Claremont Colleges' student newspaper, I reestablished the special projects desk. That meant covering anything from historical pieces rooted in the archives to interactive or thematic multi-page spreads. The special projects took me down the path to better understand how the Africana Studies department came about by way of student activism  or how previous coverage contributed to erasures when it came to telling the story of queer campus narratives. The research was a collective effort and took at least a year's worth of work for both. It's safe to say it became a passion project for many of my newspaper staff peers and myself. 

I guided the direction for both archival projects and guided my peers through the archival research process, spanning over a century's worth of documents for both endeavors. In doing so, I grew to know the ins and outs of the special collections in Claremont and the archival research process as a whole, one I fine tuned later on writing a History thesis. 

For both "Illuminating 5C Black Legacies" and "Queer Histories and Futures," my contributions  helped our paper win top recognition from the California College Media Awards.

Keep scrolling to take a look...