What "Research" Looks Like

Though my life has been very preoccupied with research for my senior honors thesis, I have yet to blog about it. WOOPS! In the following post, I'm just going to talk a bit about what my research looks like, what I actually spend my hours doing, and weigh some thoughts about. *In the process of writing this I realized probably no one is interested in the procedural workings of archival research. So I don't actually say that much about procedure. You're welcome, haha!


The first batch of archival research I conducted was at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Archives. I worked with documents from the 1920's and 30's: (handwritten) student essays, personal correspondence, official government documents, saved newspaper clippings, transcripts of conversations - you name it. This is a picture of the Hoover Tower @ Stanford - I worked beside and below the tower. Unfortunately no pictures of the archive reading area, but it's not that exciting. Just a bunch of people sitting around tables with lots of old documents and getting reprimanded by the Archivists for not following rules about handling documents!

A few months ago I got an undergraduate research scholarship to come to Columbia to start work in another set of archives on Robert College. I've included some better pictures of Columbia....

Butler Library, where the Rare Book and Manuscript Library is located. Butler is one of the main college libraries, so it is familiar to most of everyone that goes to Columbia. Didn't seem that many undergrads visited the 6th floor, however, which is full of reading rooms and of course, the archives!

Terrible state of affairs with some of the documents. As you can see, it looks like absolute chicken scratch. I took a looksie at these and panicked for a good half hour that there would simply be no way of deciphering the writing. But luckily, as we move away from 1860, the paper, ink, and script gets much better. Today I got to typed documents, woot woot!

The Archival Reading Room: A bunch of desks like this, surrounded by an interesting assortment of people also conducting research. I am always so curious about what other people are reading, but it doesn't seem to be in etiquette to have conversations with other researchers.

The coolest thing about historical archival research is that it brings you to cool places (ex/ I am in new york). In my next blog I will write about actually fun things I have done in the city, besides reading obscure documents. For now, the view from my room in the Upper West Side (graciously provided by Rah and Edwin!)

Interviewing Egyptian students at UCSD on current unrest

"Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear"

My facebook newsfeed has been buzzing with youtube video posts from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's recent "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the National Mall this past week. It was interesting to watch Stewart's speech - I had never really seen him that serious (scattered, naturally, with comedic relief) about rifts in American society, about the politics of fear, reasserting pluralistic and "liberal" values.

A few days after watching the video, it comes to mind again as I write my essay for Professor Pamela Radcliff on "Communism and Fascism 1919-1945." A few points I want to make regarding the emergence of extreme political movements in times of political/economic/social crisis.

Just for the sake of argument, you could claim that our contemporary world is seeing a lot of the same crises as inter-war Europe. "Endemic" small-scale warfare, economic depression/mind-blowing unemployment rates, violence (terrorism, drug warfare, warfare in general), politicians without solutions...obviously when you add a lot of nuance to these issues it's not the same as interwar europe. But just for the sake of argument, let's take our two anachronistic comparisons and play with the idea that we could learn something from the societies before us about how to deal with crises of meaning.

One thing Radcliff mentioned in lecture the other day really hit home with me: citizens in post-war Britain, despite all of the issues it was facing, the questioning of liberal capitalist values fundamental to their political and economic structure, believed in the system. Trief to effect change within the democratic, parliamentary process.

This type of "revolutionary" sentiment stands in stark contrast to the Bolsheviks, whose radicalist ideology was about challenging all the fundamental structures of liberalism and capitalism. The governance they put in place after the revolution is a new story, but anyways they were (mm...some were) about changing everything.

I think Americans today exist firmly in the former camp, completely and totally unwilling to undermine fundamental social and political structures, and I think this could be bad or good...I really don't know! I'm leaning towards good, but the radicalist strand in me says f it all and let's restart. At least in a long conversation with my best friends I might let me commie side emerge and talk about starting a real revolution.