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Last week the History Department celebrated student research by awarding the London Study Group Work-in-Progress prizes.  As the description of the prizes has it: "The three papers all demonstrate energetic archival work, spritely imagination, and a willingness to be wrong and re-assess, whilst remaining (in our profession's favourite expression) 'very much works in progress'."  The three papers were:

•  Emily Kahn, “‘A Right to an Opinion’: Post-Blitz Planning Exhibitions and Public Participation in Reconstructing London, 1943–1951”
•  Mara Stein, “‘A Most Extraordinary Variety of the Human Race’: the Ethnic Show in Victorian Britain, 1840–1900.” 
•  Annie Zhanling Wang, “Defining Black Theatre—Racial Discourse in the Early Life of Talawa Theatre Company, from 1986 to 1996.”  

It's one of the great things about being the director of the London History Study Group that you get to see students develop projects from nothing into sophisticated and original research.  This time last year—as they took the London Colloquium in preparation for departure—the students had only the broadest sense of what they might want to work on.  Several of the group changed their plans considerably.  Even Annie, who ended up winning a prize, initially bounced around looking for a topic.

There were many papers that I could have chosen for the prizes, but I chose these three because—beyond the quality of the work involved—they showed the variety and possibilities of work in the London archives.  We go to London because students can do original research in almost any topic, using the enormous range of archives open to them.  Emily developed her topic at the National Archives at Kew in south-west London (where most students begin) and quickly found that the best records were at the Metropolitan Archives in the City of London and at the private library of the Royal Institute of British Architects—which was happy to help her because they could see the seriousness of the project.  Mara worked in five different libraries, including the Wellcome Library near Euston Station, where she was able to spread out original handbills and advertising posters on the large tables of their manuscripts room, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she initially opted not to cross a picket line of striking university professors.  Annie worked in the archives of the Victorian and Albert Museum, which are not located at the museum in Kensington but at the end of a long bus trip into west London.  There she was surprised and delighted to find that the doorman's wife was from her home town in China.

All the topics evolved.  Emily realized her topic was really about the way experts interacted with the public in the post-war Britain; Mara found herself looking at the way the weird displays of human beings reflected British imperial racism; and Annie found that her paper on the Talawa Theatre Company revealed the tension between the silencing of black voices and the search for legitimacy in the London theatre world.  At the end of semester, Annie was able to travel to the north London flat of Yvonne Brewster, one of the founders of the Talawa Theatre, and interview her for two hours.

The three papers and the work behind them show, I hope, the wonderful intellectual possibilities offered by the Study Group.  I really think our students accomplish something extraordinary—and something that will set them up for whatever professional they seek to enter.  They will never again be cowed by an enormous, complex task!  That said, the group have told me to stop talking about how much work was involved—they worked hard, certainly, but their overall feeling was a sense of having had the opportunity to write their senior theses with immense materials available and in a semester when they had time to breathe and think.  Oh, and they also had a lot of fun—it's London, after all.

[Students interested in the 2020 Study Group should contact Professor Andy Rotter, arotter@colgate.edu; those interested in the 2021 group should contact Prof. Antonio Barrera, abarrera@colgate.edu]

Written by Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the 2018 London History Study Group