Brendan Campbell's History Internship 2024

 This week my team and I had our final presentations for the Summer 2024 history internship. We had the privilege of getting to hear from several teams from a diverse range of niches and applications of history, and we were able to share our own work with the rest of the group. I was already familiar with Dr. Gannon's Olustee project from the History and Historians class of hers that I took last semester, so it was interesting to hear how that has been progressing.  The other groups were fascinating as well. One was about the history of Sanford and another was a dive into sixteenth-century English letters. I was pleased and excited to be able to contribute by sharing what I and my peers had learned over the course of our internship. It was also helpful to talk about the trials and tribulations that come with such work; it was reassuring to hear that everyone has learned about and dealt with impostor syndrome, time management, or being afraid to ask questions at some point. Th...

 This week my fellow interns and I got together to work on our final presentation for all the history department internships. They were very helpful and we were all quite pleased with the results of our work. We also had a practice run of the presentation to ensure that we would not go over or under time on the occasion of the actual presentation day. We made sure to answer the two questions accorded to each slide subject as outlined by the rubric. Public speaking (or speaking over zoom for that matter, which will be the format of the final presentation) is not my strong suit, but I am not too worried about the upcoming presentation, since I know the subject matter well and I will have a team with me. I just need to take care not to speak too fast or take too much time looking for the proper word to say. As the internship is drawing to a close, I feel I can begin to look back on my work leading up to this point. I have certainly encountered many fascinating subjects I would not hav...

 This week, I completed my assignment of finding the backgrounds of people involved in the right academic fields who might be qualified to read Dispatches from Beluthahatchee: A Stetson Kennedy Reader . In the foreword alone I was able to find several relevant sources. Curiously, the book does not appear to have an acknowledgements section, which made my job easier. Part of the guidelines for the assignment was that I should not recommend any scholars who had already been acknowledged, since they had already made a contribution and were therefore biased. The introduction section was also very short and did not contain any citations, as it was more of a direct message from the editor of the book. I still read it carefully, however, as it contained useful information about Kennedy's life. While facts about the books subject matter are not directly related to my project, I have found that knowing a subject inside and out makes any adjacent research much easier, as I begin to understan...