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Multimedia

Welcome to our Multimedia site! Here you may read the FORAYS INTO THE PAST blog, watch past CCHS interviews with some of our guest speakers on why they study history and how they do their work, and listen to a CCHS podcast to learn what makes historians tick.

This year's Digital Media Fellow Mian CHEN interviewed History graduate students who had CCHS Summer Fellowships in Public History. His report is below. You can  find out more about these fellowships here.

Shaping Histories: Graduate Students Reflect on Summer Fellowship Experiences in Public History

Each summer, the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies (CCHS) Summer Fellowship Program funds History graduate students who wish to work on public history projects at non-profit organizations, such as museums, history centers, and theatres. These projects allow students to bridge the gap between academic research and community engagement. Students gain invaluable hands-on experience while contributing to historical preservation, public engagement, and local community building. In this article, we interviewed Drew Meinecke, Elizabeth Barahona, Mikala Stokes, and Mila Kaut, four graduate students who participated in the Summer Fellowship in recent years. Through these experiences, they deepened their research skills, built trusting relationships with local communities, and helped tell stories that are often overlooked in traditional academic scholarship.

Drew Meinecke, a graduate student researching twentieth-century US urban history with a focus on race and recreational spaces, spent his summer working with the Shorefront Legacy Center in Evanston. He is one of the four CCHS Summer Fellows who collaborated with this archival institution dedicated to illuminating the rich Black history on Chicago’s suburban North Shore, working both in 2023 and 2024. Through learning from trained archivists, Drew explored how to catalogue and navigate archival materials. He also engaged in archival research, which continued his interest in race and sports by exploring community activism in Evanston’s Black community. Drew benefited particularly from two collections at Shorefront: the collections of Melvin Smith (1917–2000), a local publisher and journalist, and Edwin B. Jourdain (1900–1986), Evanston’s first Black alderman. By looking at the coverage of local All-Black semi-professional baseball teams in these collections, Drew was able to investigate how race and recreational spaces shaped the social fabric of Evanston. He not only examined the athletic youth programs for the local Black community but also studied activism against discrimination and segregation in the sports field.

As Drew reflected, “I really credit my experience with Shorefront with teaching me how to be a researcher that engages and helps to empower people through their own voices, letting their voices be heard rather than just using them for my own purposes. I think that’s what we want to get at—the truth coming from people who have lived there. I also learned the actual application process and how to contact the community organization.” Drew’s work also allowed him to connect with the Evanston community in engaging ways. He participated in outreach programs for local youths, such as creating a coloring book featuring prominent historical figures from the city’s Black community. These efforts not only made history more accessible but encouraged the young generation to think critically about historical legacy.

Drew’s project was part of a broader collaborative initiative that involves Shorefront, Northwestern University, and local residents. His work contributed to a larger, year-long collaboration that culminated in a vibrant and well-attended symposium about local Black history on April 26, 2025 at Northwestern University. The event brought together scholars, students, and community members to present their findings in local Black history. As Drew noted, the public history experience “not just honed research skills but also developed lasting connections.”

Drew and Mikala at Shorefront Symposium

Drew Meinecke speaking at the Shorefront Symposium, while Mikala Stokes is second from the left at the panel table. 

The impact of CCHS Summer fellows reaches far beyond Evanston. Elizabeth Barahona, a seventh-year PhD candidate studying Black and Latino coalitions in the U.S. South, spent two summers as a curatorial fellow at the Chicago History Museum (CHM). She mainly worked on the project titled “Aquí en Chicago,” an exhibition forthcoming in Fall 2025 that focuses on the history and contributions of Chicago’s Latino communities. The exhibition will showcase the history of Latinos in Chicago with backgrounds of all nationalities over 100 years. Another Northwestern history graduate student and CCHS Summer Fellow Jojo Galvan also participates actively in this project. The CHM has been one of CCHS Summer Fellow’s closest collaboration organizations, with eleven students working on diverse topics including oral history projects, the World’s Columbian Exposition, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention from 2014 to 2024.

Elizabeth’s research at CHM focused on pivotal moments in Chicago’s Latino history. During her first summer at the museum, she carried out research at both the Chicago History Museum and the Southeast Chicago History Society. During her research, “You not only give meaning to the material at the CHM, but also work with other museums,” she reflected. Through analyses of 500 documents, she completed an article telling the stories of two Latino workers amidst the police violence against Republic Steel organizers in 1937, known as the Memorial Day Massacre. Through the article, she shows us the resilience of Latinos in Chicago and emphasizes “the pivotal role they played in the struggle for justice and equity in Chicago.” During the second summer, she worked on the understudied topic of Latino guest workers during WWI. As their role in this period is often only mentioned in passing in secondary literature, she evaluated a rare photograph negative in the Chicago History Museum collection and cross-referenced materials in Northwestern Library and other Chicagoland museums. Her contributions further helped bring stories of labor activism and immigrant experiences to the forefront.

Elizabeth actively participated in curatorial research, as well as provided mentorship for high school students in the preparation for the exhibition. She mentored Latino high school students from around the city to do research, read historical books, and write labels for primary sources that will appear in the exhibition. She also helped the CHM team give students an all-encompassing experience in the museum. Students were guided to shadow collection and project development so that they could understand how a museum functions. They were also taken behind the scenes at the Field Museum and the Hull-House Museum to understand the professional experience of working at a museum. Through these projects, Elizabeth not only created and curated knowledge about the history of Latinos in Chicago, but also engaged a new generation in history making.

The CCHS Summer Fellowship also funds graduate students to explore diverse opportunities in public humanities. Mikala Stokes, a graduate candidate specializing in political activism and lived experiences of free African Americans in pre-Civil War America, participated in multiple summer fellowships. One of her standout achievements was involvement in the Colored Conventions Project, which aims at bringing nineteenth-century Black organizing to digital life. Led by Professor Kate Masur at Northwestern University, Mikala participated in a digital exhibit “Black Organizing in Pre-Civil War Illinois: Creating Community, Demanding Justice,” which focused on African-American political activism before the Civil War in Illinois. As this project was directly related to Mikala’s dissertation research, she noted, “It was good to just be exposed to different types of documents and, in parts of my dissertation, use some of the things that I had read as a part of that project.” Mikala also gained valuable experience in working collaboratively, an aspect of research often underemphasized in the solitary world of dissertation writing. “I got to sit down and think about what it means to do this type of work with other people. I think the end game is that you do end up with a better project. You work more efficiently,” she noted. Northwestern history graduate students and CCHS Summer Fellows Hope McCaffrey, Marquis Taylor, and Emiliano Aguilar also participated in the Colored Conventions Project.

For the second summer, Mikala continued to contribute to the public engagement in African American history. She turned to local museum and participated in a significant project at the Frances Willard House Museum in Evanston, where she assisted with research on Black women involved in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Under the leadership of its second President Frances Willard (1839–1898), the WCTU became an important organization for women’s reform in late nineteenth century. This project aimed to recover information about African-American women who participated in the WCTU and held official leadership positions within the organization. Mikala’s work involved sifting through thousands of pages of minutes to identify Black women who contributed to the WCTU. It will result in a comprehensive database “Black women of the WCTU” that could be used for future research on African American women’s roles in social reform. The project was also joined by Northwestern graduate students and CCHS Summer Fellows Kenneth Salter (History) and Christopher Montague (Department of Black Studies).

Supported by the third CCHS summer fellowship, Mikala explored a new possibility of public humanities with Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community, a public scholarship journal focused on environmental humanities where she served as an assistant editor. She provided editorial feedback on a wide range of articles in the field of environmental history and public scholarship. Mikala particularly enjoyed helping authors strengthen their arguments and improve the clarity of their writing. “As I was also dissertating, it was really cathartic to help other people make their writing stronger,” she noted. The editorial experience also allowed Mikala to reaffirm the possibility of pursuing a public humanities career.

Reflecting on these diverse experiences, Mikala appreciates the engagement opportunities offered by these public humanities projects. Through digital exhibition, database building, and editing, Mikala not only gained a diverse skillset but also found the experiences “transformative” in helping her understand the meaning of being a public scholar.

The CCHS Summer Fellowship Program helps Northwestern history graduate students cultivate deep-rooted, enduring relationships with local communities across Chicagoland. Mila Kaut, a PhD candidate in history, worked with the Calumet Heritage Partnership, which focuses on preserving the cultural and historical heritage of the Calumet Region spanning Illinois and Indiana. The region has a complex history marked by industrialization, subsequent environmental degradation, and community activism. Mila’s dissertation research on the relationship between historical commemoration and cultural landscape in the Midwest aligned closely with the partnership’s goals. The project is also supported by Northwestern Ph.D. alumnus Emiliano Aguilar, now an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. In a sense, the project facilitated the cooperation of Northwestern public historians from two generations.

In her first year with the project, Mila contributed to the Calumet Region’s effort to gain National Heritage Area designation. Her work involved creating a quarterly newsletter, developing a directory of regional cultural organizations, and assisting with an annual conference at the Field Museum. “The Calumet Heritage Partnership allowed me to explore Chicago’s cultural landscape,” Mila explained. Her work gave her valuable insight into how heritage organizations operate and how public historians work.

The second summer, Mila took on more roles in the Partnership and had more collaborations with local communities. She raised money from various organizations within the Calumet Region for a documentary screening community event. She also assisted in an oral history project with the Riverdale community, a predominantly Black community affected by industrial pollution, displacement, and segregation in South Side Chicago. As Mila shared, people were able to “hear about Riverdale residents, who have lived there for decades, hear about their relationships to that land and to the river, to their homes, and their cultural institutions” and to “use those stories to tell a different story about Riverdale.” She not only transcribed some of the stories but also developed a practical guide for future oral history projects in the area. In this process, she helped create metadata for the collection, which will be housed at Indiana University, to ensure it would be accessible to both academics and community members in the future.

“This experience is so great, because it is not just community-based but also for the community and through the community. You’re doing multifaceted community-facing work,” Mila reflected. Her experience in public history showed her the power of community engagement and the importance of ensuring that historical work is not only academic but also public in terms of its method and its impact.

The experiences of Drew, Elizabeth, Mikala, and Mila highlight the diverse ways in which the CCHS Summer Fellowship and public humanities can enrich a graduate student’s academic and professional experience. Each student participated in projects connected to their own research, while also contributing to the broader public understanding of history. By working with museums, archives, and community organizations, they gained valuable skills in curation, teaching, and archival research, while developing deeper connections with local communities.

“This summer has made me realize how much public history can be a viable career for me,” Drew said. Mila echoed this sentiment, noting that the community-oriented work offered a “restorative” experience in contrast to the technical and specialized aspects of academic research. As these fellows continue their research, they remain committed to the idea that history belongs to everyone. As the CCHS summer fellowship program moves forward, more history graduate students will be working to make sure that the voices of those who lived it are heard loud and clear, and their communities will be empowered through history telling and history making.