I had the opportunity to work on the Feminist Student News and Protest (SNAP) Archive which hosts materials related to McGill students' activism, particularly around sexual violence. Recently, the research team has been going through the McGill Daily publications and Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students' Society (SACOMSS) office records to find material to put in the archive in the hopes of making more student activist material accessible to researchers and to provide students with a platform through which to preserve their organization's institutional memory. The team has plans to work with other McGill clubs and publications to continue expanding the archive. My duties included going through new material to decide if it was suitable for the archive, taking scans of suitable material, and uploading the material to the archive.
For my ARIA poster project, I decided to compile a timeline of McGill Daily articles that touched on McGill's sexual violence policy (SVP). The project's aim is to examine the effects of student-led activism on the development of McGill's SVP, as well as to show the roles that campus newspapers, as a form of alternative, community-run media, can have in activism using the mobilizing surrounding McGill University’s SVP as a case study.
I was first interested in pursuing an ARIA project because I had always loved the research I did in school and was looking for an opportunity to explore what it was like working on a long-term research project. I had previously taken a class on feminist communication studies with Professor Carrie Rentschler and loved her work, so I was incredibly interested in getting involved in her research projects. During this project, I hoped to learn technical skills in archiving and collecting material, as well as gain some more practical competencies in applying my social justice education to a concrete project. I also hoped to gain insight on whether academic research was a good fit for me and be able to experience working on a long-term research project.
The highlight of my internship was meeting up with student groups such as SACOMSS in person and going through their amazing activist material together. It was great to meet and correspond with people who are excited about and willing to help with our project. It also felt incredible to be able to contribute to such a useful project and provide a space for these student groups to house their institutional knowledge.
It was somewhat challenging to sync up everyone's schedules to make these visits possible because most student groups are either on a break or less staffed during the summer months, people take vacations at different times, and there are possible changes in administration over the summer within these groups. However, there was plenty of material to go through with the people who were available, and we have set up many more meetings for when the school year resumes. It was also difficult for me to be self-motivated since we were working at home and the internship consisted of primarily solo work. It helped to structure my day around meetings or in-person events, keep a running list of tasks I need to do, and break my work down into smaller chunks so I always have something manageable to work on.
I think that this ARIA project will have an incredible impact on my future and education path. This project has allowed me to explore various topics such as library and information work through archiving, social justice work through collecting activist material, and theory through the library research I conducted. It has given me a taste of working on each of these things that I was previously interested in and will help inform how I continue my studies and career after I graduate this year. I have also been able to form great relationships with the Feminist SNAP Archive research team made up of like-minded scholars in my field, which can help me make these important decisions in the future. I am also fortunate to have been invited to continue as a research assistant for the following year and can keep contributing to the archive.
Finally, I would like to thank the Garmaise Family, who made this research possible thanks to their funding of the Bram Garber Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Award.
