Undergraduate Historians Discover the Benefits of SIUE Archives and Special Collections
By Steve Tamari
One of the biggest challenges historians face is finding a ready collection of primary source material from which to craft an original work of research and writing. The process for undergraduate history majors launching their first such project in HIST 301 and 401 can be even more daunting. They have to start from scratch by identifying a feasible topic surrounded by engaging historiographical debates as well as primary sources within reach. Add to this mix the restrictions imposed on all of us by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s enough to make one contemplate changing majors.
Fortunately, there is a wealth of material very much within reach and ripe for the plucking: the archives and special collections of SIUE’s Lovejoy Library.
We spoke with two recent graduates about their success in finding easily accessible primary sources that resulted in original and compelling research and writing.
Nathan Coggeshall, of Belleville, has a long-standing interest in labor history. This spring he finished his capstone project titled “In Chicago's Shadow: Radicalism and Militancy Amongst the United Mine Workers of America in Southwestern Illinois, 1900-1925.” Coggeshall argues that during this tumultuous period in local and national history, rank-and-file miners in southwestern Illinois organized among themselves, were not beholden to union administrators, and were ideologically radical and tended toward militant action. This tendency ultimately led to a local split in the United Mine Workers and the creation of the Progressive Mine Workers of America (PMWA) in 1932 in Gillespie.
“I looked in everyone else’s backyard but my own," Cogggeshall said. "I went to pretty much every other university around here and to town halls in small towns like Nashville, Okawville and Herron. Nobody had anything (related to my interest). I don’t know what compelled me to look at SIUE and there it was: the archives of the PMWA.”
The files of the PMWA take up six cubic feet and are chock full of meeting minutes, financial documents, mutual aid programs and records related to allied unions.
Coggeshall explained, “I honed in on the minutes of meetings more than anything else which was pretty fun to do… there was coal dust and finger prints on the pages making for a real human connection to the past.”
Coggeshall was able to delve beyond the biased reporting on militant miners in the pages of the business-friendly Belleville News Democrat to piece together a more nuanced history of divisions within the United Mine Workers that highlighted ideological tensions between workers and union higher-ups.
Joseph Gassiraro, of Edwardsville, was inspired to use SIUE archival sources when working as an Undergraduate Research and Gassiraro, intrigued by the passionate divisions among faculty over the organization of the university, found old course catalogs a useful guide to the structure of the university. Creative Activities (URCA) Assistant under Dr. Robert Paulett in a project to digitize and transcribe a series of interviews of CAS faculty (conducted by Dr. Ellen Nore between 2005-2008) to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the College. Gassiraro ended up writing his HIST 401 paper on the origins of the College. In addition to the interviews, Gassiraro was able to make use of correspondence dating back to the early 1990s, an online archive of course catalogs, and the minutes of Faculty Senate meetings. He found that the dividing line between proponents and opponents of the College did not reflect differences between the humanities and the science as one might expect. Rather, professors were split across disciplines on the purpose and place of departmental specialization and autonomy, on the one hand, and the purpose of a liberal education, on the other.
“The oral histories cover the educational and professional progression of each individual but I learned a tremendous amount that I did not expect to find or, initially, thought I needed to know from the library’s digitized collection of course catalogs,” said Gassiraro.
Combining the career trajectories of individuals with the larger context of the university’s history allowed him to see how biography and institutional history converge.
University Archives and Special Collections Librarian Dr. Steve Kerber encourages students and others to make as much use of possible of the university’s own archives and of its unique special collections. He recommends the following links to get started: the Louisa H. Bowen University Archives & Unique Collections, Researching SIUE History Online; Digital Collections and Exhibits; and Finding Aids for Special Collections.
