This panel demonstrates the expansive nature of working with historical objects, including archival documents and photos, ancient materials, and curating art exhibitions. Students have perspectives ranging from sociological research, digital archives, archaeology, and work in an art gallery. Through their individual work, they collectively grew to understand the pertinence of public history and its cultural and educational relevance. These internships show how the research and analytical skills developed in the humanities are transferable to a wide range of professions.

Moderator: Deborah Richards, Head of Archives and Special Collections

Discovering and Conserving the Past: Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project
Amanda Weber ’26, Art History and Classical Studies double major

Digital Archives Internship
Sophie Glasco ’26, English major & Museums, Archives, and Public History Nexus

Uncovering the History of Holistic College Admissions Through Archival Research
Lela Saponara ’26, Sociology major & History minor

Modern gallery: New York City Start-Up Art Gallery Experience
Deyki ’25, Studio Art major & Philosophy minor

Speaker name: Amanda Weber
Title: Discovering and Conserving the Past: Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project
This summer I participated in the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project, a celebrated decades-old archaeological dig in rural Tuscany directed by Dr. Anthony Tuck of UMass Amherst. My days were spent on an ancient Etruscan hill, where I pickaxed, shoveled, sifted, and helped with the documentation of our finds. We were given the opportunity to learn about conservation in an archaeological context, meaning weekly work in the conservation lab where we cleaned objects, organized the archives, and glued ancient objects back together. I was given the opportunity to work with intelligent and established archaeologists, and through them I learned a great deal about the preservation of ancient history, and the responsibility of being able to uncover it myself.

Speaker name: Yangzhen “Dekyi” Deji
Title: Modern gallery: New York City Start-Up Art Gallery Experience
In this presentation, I will talk about what it is like to live in New York City and work in a start-up art gallery that focuses on supporting gender minority groups in the industry. I will introduce the day-to-day life of a gallery intern and the different projects that I was involved in. From researching to archiving, and all the hands-on gallery works.

Speaker name: Sophie Glasco
Title: Digital Archives Internship
Interning at the Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections, I digitized an upcoming exhibit on the centennial anniversary of Clapp Laboratory. I scanned various historic objects, including photographs, documents, and academic notes, and edited them in Photoshop. I managed a WordPress site, where I wrote alt-text to accompany each digitized image.

Speaker name: Lela Saponara
Title: Uncovering the History of Holistic College Admissions Through Archival Research
This summer, I worked as a research assistant under Professor Ben Gebre-Medhin, assistant professor of sociology here at Mount Holyoke, who is conducting research into the trajectory of holistic admissions at selective colleges in America. Over the course of three months, I visited the archives of numerous elite institutions in the New England region and documented physical applications for admission, accumulating a total of ninety-two applications from the span of 1853- 2010. After this, I organized the data into qualitative coding categories and wrote a research paper on the findings, including a literature review and an analysis of the pertinence of the findings to the use of cultural capital in college admissions. This research helped me gain valuable experience in working with and interpreting archival materials, as well as connecting them effectively with modern knowledge in the field.