NYC History Internships Will Run Again Next Summer

The history department offered two new internships last summer, one at the New York Historical Society and one at the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. Next summer will be the second year the department offers stipends for the internships, which range from three to six weeks and are open to rising seniors.Each student who is chosen to participate in the internships will work on a history project that will then be presented to the broader public. What history instructor Betty Luther-Hillman called “public history” is a type of historical work, separate from schools and universities, that works inside museums, public policy organizations, historical societies or in social media.

“In order to engage the public with historical knowledge, I aimed my research beyond the specialized academia I was used to in the school setting.”

Luther-Hillman said the internships offer valuable opportunities that wouldn’t be available without alumni donations for stipends and connections set up with organizations. “For both the financial funding and for providing those contacts to create those opportunities it was really wonderful,” she said.The application process, which according to Luther-Hillman should take place in the winter, will include a written application as well as an interview with the respective organization. Last year, Project Manager of the The Center for Science and Society Naomi Rosenkranz interviewed and selected senior Christine Hu as the inaugural intern. Vice President, Director of the Center for Women’s History and Chief Historian of the New York Historical Society Valerie Paley selected senior Sally Ma. Luther-Hillman said there were several applicants for each internship and anticipates the same outpour of interest from the class of 2018.Paley said the projects for internships next summer will include exhibition research, K-12 curriculum design and consultation, brainstorming public programs and many other administrative tasks. While the New York Historical Society has already offered internships for high school and college students for several years, last summer was the first time they placed a high school student within the college intern program. “Sally Ma was a stellar inaugural Exeter intern,” Paley said.Paley believes the internship is useful for any student of history to learn how they can apply their knowledge in the workplace or in a museum setting. “It can be challenging to articulate complex ideas in an accessible way for all levels of museum visitors and is a skill that is worth learning early, no matter what career path a student ultimately chooses,” she said.According to Director of Center for Science and Society Pamela Smith, there will be two projects next summer, the Making and Knowing Project in May at Columbia and a Translation and Encoding Workshop in June in France. “Christine’s internship allowed us to share our knowledge with her, and her skills and new perspective were an enriching contribution to our work,” Smith said.Ma said her six-week internship at the New York Historical Society transformed her perspective on history. Her first task was to research New York women under the age of 35. At the time, the Center for Women’s History was working on a project called “Women’s Voices,” writing biographical profiles woven with historical primary sources. “[Paley’s] assignment completely baffled me because I never registered contemporary women as part of history,” Ma said. “After all, shouldn’t history be things at least a decade ago?”As she investigated further, she realized knowledge about young, living women helped guide her through a different facet of the feminist history—one that was not entirely comprised of white, middle-class, heterosexual women. As the only Asian on the women’s history team at the center, Ma dedicated herself to the voices of Asian American women, such as Joo-Hyun Kang, a Korean American activist advocating for NYPD police reform and rights of queer people of color and Sarinya Srisakul, a Thai first-generation New York firefighter. “I was intrigued by the eloquence and bravery of women with diverse identities and backgrounds,” she said.Ma feels that she has gained valuable archival and material research skills. She admitted that before last summer most of her research had been solely text-based for papers. An exhibition required substantial visual components, which she “had no clue how to obtain” prior to her internship experience. Luckily, the women’s history team happily offered helpful pointers. Ma was initially intimidated by this college-aged group. However, her confidence gradually grew as her research skills improved.“Honing my archival and material research skills, I marveled at the art of public history,” Ma said. “In order to engage the public with historical knowledge, I aimed my research beyond the specialized academia I was used to in the school setting.”At the Center for Science and Society, Hu also engaged with history in a form beyond the classroom. During her internship, Hu worked on a project with about two dozen graduate students from several different universities. The goal of the project was to transcribe, translate and digitize a medieval manuscript. Since it was written in old French, the group collaborated with French scholars and students from a French university. Most of Hu’s day was spent doing managerial tasks such as taking photos and uploading them to the group’s Flickr, updating their website and ordering food for meetings. She also helped edit and research annotations that were found throughout the manuscript.When Hu read the description of the internship she thought it sounded like a great opportunity. “I’m someone who has trouble choosing between subjects when it comes to deciding what I want to do when I get older,” she said. “It was nice to see something that seemed to combine a lot of different subjects.” Even though the project was history-based, she noted that her work also involved computer science with the digitization of the manuscript.Just like Ma, Hu was the only high school student in the group and found it “kind of intimidating” to be surrounded by established scholars. However, many of them took her “under their wing” and were helpful and friendly, providing an overall enlightening summer experience. “They were really nice, and I got a lot of insight as to what it was like to study history at that level,” she said.