As the summer ends, I am grateful to reflect on a rewarding summer of research in the Brackenridge Fellowship. My project studying the contemporary collection and display of quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama is only growing as I look forward to the fall semester. Thankfully, becoming a Brackenridge Fellow allowed me to understand my project in new ways and learn more about myself as a researcher.
Before studying Gee’s Bend quilts, I had never completed independent research this intensively. I began reviewing several previous exhibition catalogues, documentary films, interviews, and archival materials to piece together the history of Gee’s Bend, a small town in Alabama known for its quilting tradition. This process deepened my research interests and brought about new and different questions about my project as a result. It was as if my original research question was a tree trunk and every new source material led to create new branches of my project, which was exciting but difficult to navigate as my project progressed. My research mentor Dr. Gretchen Bender often helped me decipher the best next steps with so many branches to choose from, and I am grateful for that guidance. More than anything, this summer was an opportunity to take my learning into my own hands, gaining project management skills that will prove valuable as I continue researching this upcoming year.
One of my favorite parts of the Brackenridge Fellowship was traveling to see Gee’s Bend quilts in person! The fellowship allowed me to spend a weekend in Philadelphia to view the exhibition Gee’s Bend Quilts from the Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in June. I also had the opportunity to interview the curator of the exhibition to understand more about the objects and the museums’ relationship with Gee’s Bend art and artists. Throughout the summer, I appreciated learning more about other students’ research experiences in our fellowship meetings and building camaraderie with the other members of my cohort, all of whom had projects dissimilar from mine but shared my feelings of excitement, interest, and occasional apprehension. Our fellowship discussion of quantitative research methods inspired me to begin collecting data about Gee’s Bend quilts’ provenance, which I will continue in the fall.
As I close out, I would like to thank the Frederick Honors College for the opportunity to complete this fellowship, not only because of the research progress I made in this program but also the future opportunities it is driving me to pursue. I am currently in the process of applying for the Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil) degree through the FHC, which I will complete in the next year as my research deepens and grows. While I plan on working in museum spaces after graduation, this experience is also pushing me to consider the possibilities of further education in art history and cultural anthropology in the coming years. I feel confident that the Brackenridge Fellowship has helped me prepare for all of these possibilities, and I cannot wait to see what happens next.