Published by WashU Libraries on Pressbooks

Public Speaking for Modern Learners: Self-Assurance, Adaptability, and Professional Growth provides a practical, streamlined approach to oral communication in social and professional settings. The book seeks to meet the needs of modern learners and provide accessible, relevant, and adaptable lessons on developing communication and public speaking skills in a variety of environments. Joe Cruz, Academic Director of Management & Organizational Change at WashU Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS), developed the text for Oral Communication, a required course for the BSIS in Strategic Communications at WashU.

Each chapter of Public Speaking for Modern Learners focuses on building specific public speaking skills, such as developing strategies for managing anxiety and building confidence; learning to structure your ideas to create a purposeful, easy-to-follow message; understanding your audience and tailoring your message to them; and more. In addition, the book is designed to be a living document that can be continuously updated and revised to reflect new research, communication strategies, and up-to-date examples. As Cruz puts it, “Communication itself is an ever-evolving process, shaped by human experience. This book is designed to reflect that same dynamic. It’s a shared tool, built to support you now, but also to adapt with each new group of students who bring their own voices into the process” (Learning Through an Open Educational Resource).

Public Speaking for Modern Learners is an open educational resource published by WashU Libraries in partnership with the DI2 Accelerator Award for Open Educational Resources. The complete list of award winners is shared on the WashU Libraries’ website.

About the Author

Joe Cruz is the Academic Director of Management and Organizational Change and an instructor at the School of Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS) at WashU. He earned his B.A. from Kean University, his M.A. from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and his Ph.D. in mass communications from Pennsylvania State University.

His research and teaching interests include media ethics, organizational communication, and civic engagement. His work has appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Communication, Atlantic Journal of Communication, and Qualitative Research Reports in Communication. He has taught public speaking and oral communication for several years.

About Open Books at WashU Libraries

Are you interested in creating an open textbook or accessible digital publication related to teaching, learning, or research at Washington University? Pressbooks is an easy-to-use tool for WashU authors to publish openly licensed books in multiple formats on a professional platform optimized for learning. Contact Cadence Cordell, Digital Publishing Manager, to request a consultation.

Child characters appear in both newspaper strips and comic books. The Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) houses multiple examples of both formats, which when compared, show a significant difference in how these child characters are portrayed. These examples can be found in materials housed in the Craig Yoe Teaching Collection and the Center for the Humanities Comics Collection, which collectively contain both original comic drawings and printed comic books.

Newspaper comic strips serve a primarily adult audience. Characters are usually adults themselves and play into more mature situations and humor. Children will occasionally appear in these strips, but their portrayal is often, at best, set dressing or props for their parents. At worst, these children are pushed into the “loveable nuisance” archetype.

Gasoline Alley, created by Frank King, is one of America’s longest lasting and most beloved newspaper strips. Originally meant as a strip focused on cars and mechanics, editor Joseph Patterson wanted to attract a larger female audience and insisted that a baby be introduced into the cast. The character Skeezix would become a mainstay in the comic for decades.

DIRA houses a few original Gasoline Alley strips in the Craig Yoe Teaching Collection. One strip shows the Wallet Family on an outing to the lake. While the strip only has three panels, the close family bond between Walt and his sons, Skeezix and Corky, is clear. The banter between Walt and Skeezix is teasing and light as they both have smiles on their faces.

Furthermore, Walt shows off his genuinely good fathering skills when he holds the boys’ hands into the lake and warns them not to wade out too far. The evident bond potentially stems from the fact that Skeezix and Walt’s relationship is heavily based on Frank King and his own son. The strip’s target audience was also families, which is another probable driver of Gasoline Alley’s healthy portrayal of children and families.

A less complex, and moderately less beloved, American comic strip exemplifies another role that children are often thrown into by a gag-a-day style comic strip. The archetype known as the “loveable nuisance” depicts child characters within adult oriented comic strips. Lil’l Folks by Tack Knight has a cast of characters predominately made up by children but is still written for an adult/parental audience.

The strip titled “The Upstart” is generally lighthearted, but the central joke is unfairly at a child’s expense. In this particular Lil’l Folks strip a group of children race home from school when an older girl asks what Reg’s full name. A youngster responds, “Reginald Sitdown–that’s what the teacher calls him!”

This draws a shocked look from the two other kids, who may understand the phrase as a mean-spirited jab from their teacher. It’s a mild example of the role kids are pushed into by their authority figures, but it can still have a lasting impact. Reg’s predicament, however, is nowhere as egregious as some of the stories explicitly written for kids have turned out to be.

The Center for the Humanities Comics Collection holds thousands of comic books from over five decades; some of these titles specifically target a younger demographic. When looking through the comic books published specially for a juvenile audience, themes of endangerment, abandonment, and abuse were presented as common and central to the stories.

Our Gang is a comic book that covers the spectrum of dismal to damagingly offensive. The first story follows a group of kids who help a washed-up circus performer get his truck running, track down his escaped lion and tiger, and find him a new job. For all this effort, the kids get warm praise, but no other compensation for the labor, which is not entirely unsurprising. What is surprising, however, is that this story is the only one which features a fully human cast.

The second story in Our Gang, titled “Flip and Dip,” immediately throws that feel-good atmosphere created by the first story off a cliff. The characters here are anthropomorphic monkeys living in the jungle, and the story revolves around a series of miscommunications that ends with every single member of the family wanting to violently hurt one another. The final panel of the comic shows the parent monkeys spanking their crying children with smiles. This story stood out horribly, as the initial conflict is brought on by the children wanting to do something nice for their parents. The central moral of the story becomes a warning against doing any favors for your parents lest it backfire.

Another children’s comic imparting nearly the same message in an equally disturbing way is found in a Giggle Comics story featuring the character Superkatt. What makes this particular storyline far more disturbing is the fact that it’s meant as a Mother’s Day tribute where the opening panel depicts a mother’s hand around her child’s throat.

The story follows Superkatt trying to make this a special Mother’s Day for himself and his friend Humphrey. Nearly every plan Superkatt makes goes awry and eventually the two find themselves without presents and in prison. Shockingly, Humphrey’s mother who abandoned him as a child is another prisoner, but the reunion devolves into a berating and beating.

Superkatt doesn’t fare much better, as his mother waits at home with a sour expression and a baseball bat. Again, the moral being imparted to kids being no matter how much a child wants a relationship with their mother and the lengths they go to please them, it’s a lost cause and will be met with corporal punishment.

Ultimately, it’s hard to imagine any of these storylines getting approved for publication today. A historical gripe against comic books has been their supposed bad influence on children, causing delinquency. Perhaps these stories of punishment are meant as a counterbalance. With stories like these being handed to children, one has to consider the lasting impact on young minds. These comics suggest that it may be in a kid’s best interest to keep looking over their parent’s shoulder at the Sunday morning funnies.

Maria Pellegrino is an MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture candidate at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and serves as the Dowd Illustration Research Archive fellow (February-May 2026) in the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections.

The impetus for finding May Swenson’s voice and allowing her to tell her own life story in her own words came from May’s diary entry on December 22, 1952:

I want to confirm my life in a narrative—my Lesbianism—the hereditary background of my parents, grandparents, origins in the ‘old country’—When my brother Roy was here 2 weeks ago we talked of our childhood—the rocking horse with no ears & a real brush tail our father made. (The Key to Everything [TKtE], 1)

The modernist poet May Swenson (1913–1989) was a lifelong diarist whose earliest surviving diary dates from 1935, when May was twenty-two. A portion of her diaries, those from 1935 until 1959, when she was forty-six, capture May’s distinctive voice as she writes about her journey from Salt Lake City to New York City, her struggle to support herself in Depression-Era New York, her search for self-identity, and her determination to forge a career as a poet.

May wanted the narrative of her autobiography to begin much earlier than 1935. “The hereditary background of my parents, grandparents, origins in the ‘old country’” was her chosen starting point.

The May Swenson Papers at WashU made this possible. The 139-page autobiography of May’s father, Dan Swenson (box 167, folder 5393), enabled me to tap Dan’s authentic voice as he related the story of his own and his daughter’s “hereditary background.”

Dan wrote:

After tracing in detail his family’s conversion to Mormonism, their relocation to Zion in Utah, and his marriage to May’s mother, Margaret Hellberg, Dan wrote about his eldest child’s birth:

Dan did not write about May’s early life. However, in 1994, five years after May’s death, her third partner Rozanne Knudson arranged for the recording of lengthy interviews with six of May’s sisters and brothers (MS111, box 222). These taped interviews allow for an easy transition from May’s father’s voice to those of her siblings: Dan, George, Ruth, Beth, Margaret, and Paul. Their interviews are valuable primary sources of detailed information about May’s early life from childhood through high school, college and beyond.

May’s brother George remembered May as an ideal older sister who told wonderfully engaging stories to her young siblings. As George reflected on May’s imaginative storytelling, he realized that in talking to her brothers and sisters May was “able to put into words her dreams.” (MS111 Series 7.1.b Interview with George Swenson; TKtE,12)

May’s brother Dan spoke about her falling away from the Mormon Church during her college years. Trying to make sense of his sister’s religious lapse, Dan attributed it to the influence of May’s friendships with classmates, particularly those in the drama department, who were not Church-approved types. They smoked, for example, as did May. But May was never confrontational at home and tried to hide her smoking from the family. Dan recalled that she used to sneak up to the roof of her father’s workshop to smoke. (MS111 Series 7.1.b Interview with Dan Swenson; TKtE, 26)

May’s sister Margaret was the sibling who first knew about May’s attraction to women. Several years after May left home Margaret “inherited” May’s bedroom in Logan. In the room was a cedar chest still filled with May’s earliest diaries, mementos, and letters from friends, including from May’s first female crush, her elementary school classmate Helen Richards. “I am ashamed to say that I read them,” confessed Margaret. “Maybe that’s how I knew she was gay.” (MS111 Series 7.1.b Interview with Margaret Woodbury; TKtE, 22, 27)

A year after May graduated from Utah State Agricultural College, she left the security of her loving family for Salt Lake City, where she worked selling ads for Utah magazine. Her earliest extant diary begins then, on November 24, 1935, with the words:

Well, how soon do you think I will be dead? Many people have died at the age of twenty-two and for no reason beyond the excellent reasons Fate has. I have a feeling tho that I shall see an old age for long stretch barren of adventure like a desert without wind and every mile like the next and level and sandy. (TKtE, 30)

At this point, May herself takes control of the narrative as she reveals in the pages of her diaries: her decision to leave Salt Lake City and settle permanently in New York City; the succession of low-paying ghostwriting and typing jobs she holds in New York; social interaction with other struggling artists; employment with the Federal Writers Project; love interests from Arnold Kates to Anca Vebrovska to Sylvia Norman to Pearl Schwartz; the early successes of her career as a poet; and her friendship with literary colleagues such as James Laughlin, Alfred Kreymborg, and Elizabeth Bishop. May’s extensive correspondence in the May Swenson Papers supplements her diaries and helps to further flesh out her interpersonal relationships.

For example, the poet and literary critic Alfred Kreymborg, who was thirty years older than May, diligently promoted her work in the late 1940s and early 1950s and was responsible for May’s invitation to Yaddo in the fall of 1950. Kreymborg’s genuine enthusiasm for May’s talent as a writer is apparent in his letters to her.

On March 15, 1949, Kreymborg wrote:

With an eye toward Kreymborg’s usefulness, May sent him equally flattering replies. “I deeply value your comment and criticism,” she wrote in an undated letter, “and your advice as to publication of a volume would, of course be especially appreciated.” (MS111 box 85 folder 3192;TKtE, 157)

May’s polite letters, however, stand in sharp contrast to her private assessment of Kreymborg as revealed in her diary. During the summer of 1950, for instance, she wrote that while Kreymborg was away at the MacDowell Colony for several weeks it was “a relief to be deprived of his 9 o’clock phone calls,” adding, “I’m afraid he is really senile—the way he plays chess (the most abject defensiveness) and his mewling puling mannerisms—he’s pitiful—and disgusting.” (MS111 box 184.1 folder 7). May’s deep sense of independence caused her to resent accepting help with her career from her eager, self-appointed patron. Their relationship was far more complex than one might assume without the benefit of both May’s diary entries and their letters.

Of unparalleled importance to me in creating May’s biography was her correspondence with Elizabeth Bishop, whom she first met at Yaddo in the fall of 1950. May and Elizabeth engaged in an active correspondence from December 1950 until shortly before Elizabeth’s death in 1979. Their letters record the development of a nearly three-decadeslong epistolary friendship. More important for my purpose, May’s unfiltered honesty in her letters to Elizabeth makes their correspondence a viable substitute for the diaries that are absent after 1959.

On June 24, 1958, for example, May confessed to Elizabeth:

And in May’s letter to Elizabeth, written on December 5, 1960, we have May’s summary account of her first trip to Europe, with her partner Pearl Schwartz:

Fortunately for posterity, May Swenson was a packrat. Her papers at the Olin Library are filled with drafts of her work, extensive correspondence, photographs, drawings, audio-visual material, and now her diaries. The wealth of this material invites seemingly limitless paths of exploration for scholars into the world of this accessible yet complex poet.

For more of Margaret’s thoughts on May Swenson, see this Library of America interview with Brucia and scholar Paul Crumbley.

Eliav Barr and his husband Paul Koulogeorge (AB ’88), recognize the role that the Libraries play at the heart of academic life, and have consistently offered support for WashU Libraries’ mission to advance student learning and research excellence. Koulogeorge is the current chair of the Libraries National Council, providing input and guidance to library leadership. The couple have also made significant philanthropic contributions to WashU Libraries.

A Generous Legacy

Koulogeorge began giving to the Libraries in 1992. And in 2014, he and Eliav endowed the Paul Koulogeorge and Eliav Barr Fund to provide ongoing collections support. Koulogeorge, who retired from a marketing executive role at The Goddard School, has been a member of the Libraries National Council since 2015 and has served as chair since 2020.

Eliav Barr has come to know WashU through his husband. Together, he and Koulogeorge, who also chairs the Philadelphia Regional Cabinet, have hosted events for alumni and friends in the area. And Barr has worked with many School of Medicine alumni during his career at Merck Research Laboratories, where he is head of global clinical development and chief medical officer.

In fall 2022, the couple endowed a new position, the Miriam Barr Librarian for Jewish and Near Eastern Studies. The position honors Eliav’s mother, Miriam Barr (1937–2021), who was born in present-day eastern Ukraine, escaped from a train headed to a Nazi death camp in Poland, and eventually found asylum in Israel, where she went on to earn a nursing degree. Sam Glauber has been hired as the inaugural Miriam Barr Librarian, and a formal installation ceremony is planned for this spring.

Nourishing Future Growth

Recently, Koulogeorge and Barr made a five-year, $500,000 commitment through With You: The WashU Campaign in support of the Libraries Annual Fund. The spendable funding allows the Libraries to address emerging and urgent needs and ensures that library staff are equipped to effectively support students and faculty. The gift establishes them as sustaining charter members of the Danforth Circle Chair Level of the Eliot Society, reserved for donors who make a multiyear commitment to the Annual Fund of $100,000 or more.

To inspire broader support for the Libraries, the couple designated a portion of their gift for a university-wide Giving Tuesday challenge, with the goal of encouraging at least 1,200 donors to participate. The challenge exceeded expectations, resulting in gifts from more than 2,600 donors!

“I’m grateful for the generous support Paul and Eliav have provided to WashU Libraries,” says Mimi Calter, vice provost & university librarian. “Their partnership enables the Libraries to continually evolve our services and collections to advance transformative research and increase student engagement. And a gift that inspires others to give is truly special.” 

Determined to build on their first challenge, Koulogeorge and Barr designated a second portion of their gift to establish the WashU Libraries Annual Fund Challenge, which will match all gifts to WashU Libraries dollar for dollar. The challenge will also provide a 2-to-1 match for all new or increased gifts to the Libraries at the Eliot Society level of $1,000 or more.

“I give to WashU Libraries because, as a crucial resource for student learning and research excellence, they are the heart of academic life. My contribution helps ensure they stay up-to-date and accessible for future generations. My hope is that this challenge encourages others to support the libraries. Please join me!”

Paul Koulogeorge, AB ’88

Support the Heart of Academic Life

It’s never been truer that Libraries are the heart of the WashU campus. As a critical component of academic life, the Libraries must continually evolve services and collections to serve the changing needs of the WashU community. This is only possible through donor support.

Click on the link to participate in the WashU Libraries Challenge and help your gift go further, unlocking additional resources to support the future of the Libraries.

The Gaylord Music Library will close in May 2026 after sixty-six years. Completed in 1960, the library was a significant milestone in WashU’s growth and has since served as the focal point for the preservation, understanding, and study of music history and material culture. Funds for the music library were donated by Catherine Gaylord in memory of her husband Clifford W. Gaylord who served on Washington University’s Board of Directors from 1941 until 1953.

News articles from the time celebrate it as the only music library in the Midwest and one of the very few in the United States (“Gaylord Library at W.U. Among Nation’s Top Ten” says a headline in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat). Designed as a spacious, two-level study area with open stacks and a “modern Gothic atmosphere,” the secluded and attractive setting of Gaylord Library made it a beloved study spot for WashU students for more than six decades.

Architectural Importance

Gaylord Library’s architectural distinction, along with its historical value and influence, has garnered widespread recognition. The two-story library was designed by St. Louis architects Eric Smith and Robert Entzeroth to represent a mix of the modern and the classical, “a contemporary approach to the traditional Tudor Gothic found on this campus,” as noted by WashU musicologist Lincoln B. Spiess in 1961 (“A New Music Library in St. Louis”). “Especially significant is that, I reckon, Gaylord was the first attempt in WashU architecture to re-interpret collegiate Gothic for the twentieth century,” said Mark Scharff, Music & Special Collections Catalog Librarian. 

The intention was to achieve the atmosphere of a “self-contained music campus” with a covered walkway connecting the library to Blewett Hall, home of the Department of Music. Other striking and iconic architectural features of the building include a series of tall and narrow glass windows with limestone frames that line the walls of the first floor reading room, the elegant mezzanine level with study desks, and the eight-feet high Belgian stained glass windows above the entrance overlooking the reading room.

The stained glass window panels were designed by Fred Conway, an artist and faculty member at WashU and constructed by the Emil Frei Company of St. Louis. The three stained glass windows represent both a scientific and an aesthetic achievement: they helped get rid of the problem of the glare of sunlight in the room, enhanced the appeal of the library, and were made using a special resin compound on glass that was remarkable for its time (Plastics World, 1963).

The Growth of Music Collections

The library began with 25,000 volumes and by the end of the 1960s had expanded to 50,000 volumes. Today Gaylord’s collections hold approximately 55,000 music books and periodicals, as well as 115,000 recordings and tapes. Its archives comprise a vast collection of music manuscripts, sheet music, and rare books and scores that have supported music education and research at WashU and beyond.

The special collections at Gaylord Music Library have grown through the dedicated efforts of music librarians, music enthusiasts, and collectors, who include musicians associated with St. Louis, WashU musicologists, and alumni. Its origins, however, trace directly to WashU professor and musicologist Ernst C. Krohn, whose sale of his extensive collection to the university in 1966 established the foundation of the library’s archival holdings.

The Ernst C. Krohn Musicological Library contains 9,000 volume collection of books on music history and musicology, musical Festschriften as well as sheet music, hymnals, and many rarities that showcase American popular music and St. Louis music history.

Scharff describes the acquisition as a “major milestone that brought to the library the core of its sheet music collection.” The library’s sheet music archives number approximately 100,000 pieces of sheet music dating from the 1820s to the 1950s with compositions by Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, and others.

Through the decades, Gaylord Music Library has acquired an exceptional range of collections spanning several centuries and genres, from the music of Greek and Roman civilizations to twentieth-century masterpieces.

Its holdings include one of the largest collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century guitar music, alongside music manuscript collections connected to St. Louis as well as WashU faculty and alumni. The library also preserves manuscripts and performance scores by composers from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries, in addition to works by mid-twentieth-century American composers. Among its most notable treasures is a collection of more than 300 first and early editions of Mozart and Beethoven, complemented by numerous score editions of Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann, among others.

In addition, the library features extensive collections of film scores and musical theater anthologies, as well as opera scores and recordings, including several hundred librettos in French, English, and German.

Collections and scholarly resources were strategically acquired by music librarians to meet the research and educational needs of faculty and students. “Supporting the research needs of faculty and students has always been a strength and high priority here,” said Scharff.

Dolores Pesce, Avis Blewett Professor Emerita of Music, echoes the sentiment. “During my long association with the WashU Music Department, I have always seemed to head first to Gaylord when I arrived on campus. From my first visit to Gaylord in 1982, I found a rich reference collection on medieval music and theory, which allowed me to continue my early music research with ease. As I developed a second research area in the late nineteenth century, dedicated librarians Mark Scharff and Brad Short helped me locate sources outside of WashU and stood ready to acquire needed materials for Gaylord itself,” said Professor Pesce.

Gaylord’s collections have been extensively utilized for all levels of music education from vocal studies, piano, guitar, violin, cello, orchestra and opera to graduate and undergraduate courses in musicology, theory, and composition.

Professor Pesce observed, “Gaylord’s special collections were a boon for my graduate course that taught students how to identify, classify, and analyze sources. For example, we tackled an eighteenth-century choir book of Mexican provenance and manuscripts of Prussian composer Johann Friedrich Eduard Sobolewski who had settled in St. Louis in 1860. These sources provided invaluable training for my students, as well as intellectual stimulation for them and me.”

Music Processing Archivist Kylie Flynn, who is processing Gaylord materials for removal and preservation, said that the library closure has brought many unseen treasures to light, which capture the formative years of Gaylord Music Library and its enduring legacy. “The collections that I’ve working on processing have so many hidden gems that range from several professors’ old music courses syllabi and lecture notes, St. Louis local history, early twentieth century Met Opera playbills, and even WWII correspondence from one of the professors,” said Flynn.

Every part of Gaylord Music Library’s comprehensive collection of music books, scores, sound recordings, videos & DVDs, and research collections will remain accessible. Once relocation is complete, music collections will be housed in Olin Library, West Campus, and Special Collections.

WashU Libraries are pleased to announce the release of The Poet’s Guide to Digital Preservation, a new resource created through the Born-Digital Poetry: Planning for the Future of Literary Archives project, a multi-year initiative of WashU Libraries funded by the Mellon Foundation.

“Born digital” refers to materials created directly in a digital environment, while “digital preservation” refers to the ongoing actions needed to maintain continued access to those materials. The guide provides practical recommendations that poets and other writers can implement immediately to support the longevity of their work.

As contemporary creative practice increasingly takes place in digital environments, poets face new challenges in managing, organizing, and preserving their files. The strategies discussed in the guide reflect concerns shared by poets and translators through project workshops and a nationwide survey.

The guide was written by the Born-Digital Poetry team along with Advisory Board members Mary Jo Bang, Aditi Machado, and Layla Goushey. It also features original illustrations by St. Louis-based illustrator Dan Zettwoch.

For more information or to access the guide, visit the Born-Digital Poetry project page. If you would like printed copies of the guide or have questions or suggestions, contact the project team at borndigitalpoetry@wustl.edu.

Work

My primary responsibility was Korean materials acquisition at the East Asian Library.

It all started with learning the basics—the WashU Libraries Collection Department walked me through the acquisition workflow. Once I understood the processes, I took on the work of selecting materials based on the research interests of Korean Studies faculty and students, and placing orders through our vendor. Getting to know what our users actually needed was engaging, and there was something quietly satisfying about watching the Korean collection grow, little by little.

That said, things got interesting in August and September 2025, when international mail to the U.S. was temporarily suspended, and physical book orders came to a halt. That’s when I learned about the National Library of Korea Digitized Materials Service (NLK). It is a service through which the National Library of Korea provides digital resources to partner libraries free of charge. Previously, accessing these digital resources required a visit to the NLK itself or another partner institution—but after about two months of working through the partnership process, I successfully registered WashU’s East Asia Library as a partner library. I then put together a user guide and sent out an announcement to faculty and students. It was a small win, but honestly, one of the most rewarding things I did during the internship.

I also created a Korean Resources Guide within the existing Korean Studies LibGuide. LibGuides were completely new to me at first, but after attending the LibGuide Summer Workshop & Training, I got the hang of it. I organized the guide around categories like literature, history, and Korean language learning. I hope it helps users find specific Korean resources.

Beyond that, I had the chance to participate in various events like the All Libraries Symposium, the Digital Humanities Workshop, and the Libraries 101 series, all of which helped me understand how WashU Libraries operate as a whole. Libraries 101 in particular was a fantastic way to get a clear picture of each department’s role. More than anything, it showed me just how many people are working hard, each in their own corner, to keep this library running.

Experiences

Life in St. Louis was more vibrant than I had imagined. I cheered at baseball games, enjoyed a musical at The Muny, and visited the Gateway Arch. However, my favorite ritual was spending quiet weekends in Forest Park. Lying on the grass on a quiet weekend, looking up at the sky— that’s probably what I’ll miss most when I get back to Korea.

I also traveled quite a bit. Over the course of the internship, I visited seven cities across the US and made a point of finding libraries wherever I went. Visiting the East Asian Libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of Washington, Seattle, and getting to interact with Korean Studies librarians there was genuinely invaluable. Each institution had its own priorities and challenges, and those conversations broadened my perspective in ways I didn’t expect.

Wherever I traveled, I made it a habit to visit the local city museum. Somewhere along the way, I found myself becoming really interested in urban archiving. That curiosity led me to the Missouri History Society. I wanted to know more about what they were preserving and why, so I reached out directly—and it turned into a volunteer opportunity at the Missouri Historical Society Library & Research Center. I helped translate and tag content from Korean-language newspapers published by the St. Louis Korean community since the 1970s. Being up close to the process of recording and preserving a community’s history was something I won’t forget. Seeing students learn about the history of their own city through those materials—that felt genuinely meaningful.

In March 2026, I attended the CEAL (Committee on East Asian Libraries) and AAS (Association for Asian Studies) conferences in Vancouver. It was eye-opening to see what topics are being discussed at the forefront of East Asian librarianship and Asian Studies scholarship. I found myself thinking a lot about the evolving relationship between AI and libraries.

As a Library and Information Science student, American libraries had always been something I was curious about — the scale of their collections, the grandeur of their spaces, the systems that work so differently from what I knew. Now, I feel I understand a little more about how these institutions honor the past while building the future.

Ten months at WashU’s East Asian Library will stay with me for a long time. My perspective has grown, and so has my sense of the direction I want to take as a librarian. To everyone who helped me along the way, and especially to my colleagues at EAL—thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

About the Author

Name

Gayeong Lee

Job Title

Korea Foundation Global Intern

My project, Reimagining the Harlem Globetrotters of the 50s and 60s: A Program Shedding Light on Forgotten Stars, began as the final project for Professor Noah Cohan’s Black Athlete in American Literature course. In that class, we studied Black athletes not simply as sports figures, but as cultural and historical figures whose stories reveal larger questions about race, visibility, labor, memory, and representation. That perspective shaped the direction of my project from the beginning.

As I thought about possible topics, I kept returning to a question that had come up repeatedly in class: what happens to athletes whose accomplishments were once widely recognized, but whose stories gradually fade from broader public memory? We studied many athletes who achieved remarkable things, often while navigating difficult racial and social conditions, yet whose names are no longer discussed with the same prominence. That idea stayed with me and led me to the Harlem Globetrotters.

The specific foundation for my project came from a 1955 Harlem Globetrotters vs. College All-Stars official game program that I studied through the Lewis A. Levey Family Collection on Sports & Culture. At first, I was drawn to the program because the Harlem Globetrotters are such a recognizable part of sports history. But the more closely I looked, the more I noticed a striking imbalance. The players were present in the program, but only in a limited way. Most were listed with brief details such as name, hometown, height, and position, yet readers were given very little sense of who these athletes were as individuals. In contrast, far more space was devoted to the Harlem Globetrotters as a brand and especially to owner Abe Saperstein.

That imbalance became the core of my project. I wanted to reimagine the program in a way that restored more narrative, dignity, and individuality to the players whose labor and talent made the team’s success possible. Rather than leaving them in the margins of the booklet, I wanted to bring them closer to the center.

My thinking was also influenced by William C. Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves, which challenged me to think critically about the position of Black athletes in American culture. One of the ideas that stayed with me from that book is the tension between visibility and recognition.

Black athletes can be celebrated, watched, and commercially valuable, while still not being fully remembered or understood on their own terms. That framework helped me think differently about the original program. The players were visible, but they were not fully seen.

As a student-athlete on the football team at WashU, that question felt especially meaningful to me. Being an athlete gives you an understanding of the discipline, work, and sacrifice that come with sport. But this project reminded me that an athlete’s legacy is not shaped only by performance. It is also shaped by documentation. Who gets remembered, how they are remembered, and what gets left out all help determine the history of sport itself.

Another major part of this project was that it was my first time working with an archive. Before this, I had never done archival research, and the experience had a real impact on me. I had often thought of research mainly as gathering information, but working with archival materials taught me that research is also about interpretation, patience, and learning how to pay attention to absence as much as presence.

That became especially clear as I tried to learn more about the individual players. In some cases, it was difficult to find substantial information or even professional images. That absence became part of the argument of the project itself. History is shaped not only by what gets preserved, but also by what is allowed to fade. My redesigned program tries to push back against that process by giving these players more presence than the original program did.

One example that stood out to me was Reece “Goose” Tatum, one of the most influential early Globetrotters. Although he helped define the team’s style and legacy, he was absent from the 1955 roster even while his image still appeared elsewhere in the program’s advertising. That contradiction captured much of what interested me most: the way Black athletic labor and creativity could remain useful to a larger institution even while the individual behind it was reduced or overlooked.

Working with the Lewis A. Levey Family Collection on Sports & Culture made history feel more active and human to me. It showed me that archives are not just places where documents are stored. They are places where forgotten people can come back into view and where familiar stories can be reconsidered. That is what made this project meaningful to me. It became not just a redesign of a historical program, but an effort to think more carefully about who gets remembered in sports history and why.

Learn more about the Kartemquin Films Collection.

The Film & Media Archive is honoring Kartemquin’s important filmmaking legacy by partnering with Hi-Pointe Theatre to offer free screenings of a diverse range of films produced by the production house this summer. View details below.

Support the Film & Media Archive

The Film & Media Archive is an important center of teaching, learning, and research at WashU. As a critical storehouse of documentary film and media chronicling American life and its great political and social movements, the Film & Media Archive must continually evolve its resources and services to preserve its collections and support teaching and scholarship. This is largely possible through donor support.

Visit the gift page to support the Film and Media Archive.

Learn More about Kartemquin Films

Documenting Humanity

New Grant to Preserve Documentary from Kartemquin Films Collection

Teaching and Learning with the Kartemquin Films Collection

Film & Media Archive Receives Gift of Archival Materials from Kartemquin Films

The competition is open to all full-time Washington University students, and awardees win four cash prizes of $1500 and $750 at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Participants submit brief essays about the books in their collections. WashU faculty read the essays to select the award-winning entries.

Undergraduate Student Winners

In the undergraduate category, Rosalynde Swidler, a senior majoring in global studies, was awarded the first prize for her essay, “The Books That Bring Me Back to Her.” Sanayah Mulla-Feroze, a sophomore majoring in biology, won the second prize for her essay, “The Stories We Inherit and the Books That Question Them.”

Graduate Student Winners

Kim Lacey, a doctoral candidate in history, won the first prize in the graduate category for her essay, “The Weight of Memory: A Library of Fragments from the Soviet Steppe.” Sylvia Sukop, a PhD candidate in Germanic Languages & Literatures / International Writers Track, won the second prize for her essay, “‘Indelible Always’: Recollecting May Swenson.”

The organizing committee thanks all the students who participated in this year’s contest. Award-winning essays from the Neureuther competition (2003 to the present) are available to access on Open Scholarship.

A primary concern for libraries and museums entrusted with the care of rare materials is that current AI training methods absorb these materials into their systems irreversibly, severing the provenance connecting knowledge to its source material and making it impossible to trace the specific AI materials informing AI-generated content. The AI model would also eliminate the cultural institution’s ability to govern subsequent use of the materials.

“AI tools bring great promise and opportunity for deep engagement with our archives, but also require us to be diligent in our curatorial role. Being part of a cohort that is engaging collectively on these issues helps us all go further,” said Mimi Calter, Vice Provost & University Librarian.  

This statement, open to all cultural heritage institutions, prepares a common framework for institutions to understand what such requests by AI developers entail and how to ethically and responsibly engage with AI training requests while preserving institutional control over archival materials. Read and download statement here.

The Shared Practice was developed following an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) peer-to-peer session attended by representatives from more than 42 institutions. It was carefully refined based on feedback from a founding cohort, institutional counsel, and colleagues across the profession. The Shared Practice is a voluntary, 12-month commitment beginning April 3, 2026. It specifically focuses on archival and special collections and does not cover widely held published works.

The NEXT Award program is intended to support Washington University students, faculty, and staff who wish to explore this vast world. Travel is a valued means of expanding one’s horizons and inspiring growth, excellence, and innovation while pursuing both personal and professional goals.

Nine applicants won the 2026 NEXT awards. Awardees include undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff members.

Undergraduate Student Winners

Viktoriia Knyaz is pursuing a degree in architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. She will travel to major cities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland to examine postwar reconstruction and long-term housing systems in these countries, with the goal of identifying strategies for Ukraine’s ongoing recovery.

Ingrid Lyons-Carlson, a biology major in the College of Arts & Sciences, will travel to Fiji and New Zealand to see birds and threatened invertebrates in their native habitats and visit leading conservation organizations to learn more about conservation efforts and education.

Graduate Winners

Sumit Gupta, a PhD student in Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, will travel to Britain, France, and Switzerland to explore archives related to Buddhism and spend time at European Buddhist monasteries to gain an understanding of contemplative breath practices.

Judith Mwobobia, a PhD student in the School of Public Health, will travel across the United States (Maryland, Minnesota, Colorado, Texas, Georgia) to pursue the craft of storytelling by spending time with African immigrant families, sharing meals, and listening to their stories.

Janice Tania, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, will travel to Japan and Sri Lanka to explore access to medical and nuclear imaging in Asian countries.

Faculty Winners

John Early, a senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will travel to France to attend an artist residency and conduct cross-cultural research to further his work with Whereas Hoops, an ongoing community-based project addressing issues of race and equity in the recreational basketball landscape of St. Louis City.

Ralf Wessel, professor of physics, will travel to Italy to deepen his understanding of mosaic art at its historical origins and its contemporary practice, which will support his academic work at the intersection of neuroscience, computation, and aesthetics.

Staff Winners

Meredith Kelling, assistant director for student research and engagement at the Center for the Humanities, will travel to Minnesota and California to explore and research archives, libraries, and personal and cultural networks related to author, poet, and activist Meridel Le Sueur.

KC Kupperman, communications coordinator in University Advancement, will travel to Italy to visit museums and historical sites and learn more about the material culture of ancient Rome.