As Chrissy Hicks ’20 clicked play on her laptop, music that has not been heard for centuries filled the quiet study area in Furman’s Special Collections. The product of ten weeks of meticulous study and transcription, Hicks brought these original Medieval music manuscripts back to life.
Her project is part of the Special Collections and Archives Research and Creative Fellowships established this year with a gift from Furman alumna and retired librarian Carolyn Warden ’67 and her husband and retired chemistry professor Joseph Warden ’68.
Finding new things in remnants of the past is exactly what another summer fellow Emory Conetta ’18 set out to do. A studio art and art history double major, Conetta became interested in embroidery and its place in women’s history. She imagined how embroidery, as the medium for her senior show, could present the evolution of women’s issues in an unexpected way. When she found out about the opportunity in Special Collections, she began working with her faculty sponsor and mentor Sarah Archino, assistant professor of art, to develop a research topic.
She pitched the idea to Special Collections Librarian & University Archivist Jeffrey Makala, and he suggested an exploration of the scrapbooks created by students of the Greenville Woman’s College in the early 20th century, the golden age of scrap booking for college students.