SCRC Faculty Fellow Kate Hanzalik
by Kate Hanzalik, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, & Composition
As a professor who teaches a variety of research writing courses, the SCRC [Special Collections Research Center] has been a game changer. I was awarded a Faculty Fellowship during the Summer of 2019 to develop a course based on The Radicalism in the Arts collection, and I have turned to the SCRC ever since. Thanks to the research center, the students learned so much about archiving, the different perspectives and approaches to researching primary sources, and the hidden treasures of history. By researching the Radicalism and the Arts collection, music and spoken word from the Belfer Audio Archive, Margaret Bourke White’s photos and letters, and early 20th-century radical zines from the rare book collections, students discovered the rhetorical strategies a variety of artists used art to advocate for social change. The students’ abilities with close reading, research, and writing grew significantly, because of the materials the SCRC staff members gathered and helped us to interpret. Young writers made insightful connections between the past and present in order to acquire the course outcomes. They began to understand the importance of text and context.
We had the great fortune to study material from box 733, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which includes a letter from Malcolm X to Alex Hayley. X’s letter, in his very own handwriting, provided the students with an intimate understanding of social change from a revolutionary who remains larger than life. Students learned about how society influenced the editing marks of David Loovis, a mid-20th century LGBTQ activist author whose draft material and published book is housed in the archives. We also made use of the interesting intersections between the SU Art Museum and the SCRC; students studied radical artists’ draft sketches, radical zines, and autobiographical writing in the SCRC, then visited the SU Art Museum to study the finished pieces. This led to many discoveries about the composing process and research writing; at the same time, the experience revealed how integral the SCRC is to our university. The SCRC’s digitization services has enabled me to repurpose many of the artifacts for different lower division and pre-college courses that I teach.
The more I work in the archives, the more I realize how endless the possibilities are for students to learn. At a moment when AI is prompting Writing Studies to reconsider what critical research writing means, does, and can become, the SCRC serves as a laboratory where students actively engage these evolving questions while developing thoughtful, ethical, and rhetorically aware research practices.
Without a doubt, the SCRC is a vital part of our university, and so are the talented, dedicated team of professionals who keep it alive. Whenever I collaborate in some way with the SCRC I feel as if my job is more fulfilling.