In addition to my doctoral research, I worked at the Hesburgh Library's Rare Books and Special Collections department as a Library Assistant. Under Dr. David T. Gura, Notre Dame's Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscript, I also undertook a Graduate Student Assistantship in 2022. This Assistantship began my training in the Rare Books curatorial world. The projects below are some of the results of that training.
This exhibit, co-curated with Dr. Gura, brings together diverse materials that reveal the power of memory. Featuring an eleventh-century coin, a fifteenth-century medieval manuscript, an early printed grammar book, and a Victorian map, this exhibit is a sample of the breadth of the Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections. Each object represents the different ways that each generation has depicted the early English period (ca. 449 – 1066), whether or not their version of history reflected reality. The exhibit ran during the month of April 2022, as the RBSC April Spotlight.
This digital exhibit expands on the Spotlight Exhibit of the same title.
At times characterized as barbaric interlopers, at others the noble ancestors of the English spirit, the early English and their history have been co-opted by many with their own contemporary vision. In fact, the early English period has been used by each generation to qualify contemporary values, romanticize a distant aesthetic, and envision themselves as belonging to a distant past. This exhibit traces these narratives from the medieval to the modern, reminding that history is a continuously evolving field in which the present has a greater impact on the past than we often realize.
As a cumulation of my work as the 2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow, I am also constituting a spotlight exhibit on the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps.
I am currently constituting an exhibit, which features manuscripts which were once a part of the collection of infamous bibliomaniac, Sir Thomas Phillipps (d. 1872). Believing he was saving manuscripts from their inevitable destruction, the baronet amassed a library of 60,000 manuscripts, plus 20,000 printed works. This, however, came at a great cost. Phillipps' temper and obsession with manuscripts meant that he was often in debt and always at odds with everyone he met.
Items featured in the exhibit include three medieval English charters, one medieval French manuscript (Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin), and one early modern manuscript (a treatise on vampires). Together, they reflect the scale, scope, and lasting legacy of one of history’s most extreme collectors.
This exhibit is scheduled for installation during the first week of May, 2025. It will run until the end of June.