About the Project
The Vanderbilt Libraries houses decades of television advertisements in the TV News Archive related to a multitude of products, ranging from pharmaceuticals to clothing to furniture. In this fellowship, students had the opportunity to dig into the archive and develop a set of clips they used to create part of an exhibit analyzing a facet of American culture and life through historic and current advertisements. Fellows were encouraged to pursue a topic that interested them to as well as analyze their findings through a disciplinary lens that lent itself to a captivating, engaging exhibit. During the fellowship, students also engaged with readings pertaining to exhibit curation and design while learning about primary sources, archival description, research, and processing. Fellows collaborated to create an exhibit, generating labels and item descriptions, and creating a “narrative” of their analysis. The public exhibit increased understanding of the potential research that can be completed using the TV News Archive.
Mentor
Brenna Bierman; Giselle Hengst
Fellows
Serat Mahmud Saad; Stephanie Yu; Dee Norman
Project
The fellows' digital exhibit can be found here.