Hi everyone! My name is Claudia, and I am a first year in the Public History MA program. I am from Indianapolis, Indiana, but I just moved to DC a few weeks ago! I went to Butler University in Indianapolis for my undergrad, where I studied History, Political Science, International Studies, and Chinese. For my undergrad honors thesis, I studied the experiences of the two Chinese American Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II, Hazel Ying Lee and Maggie Gee, while also more broadly exploring themes in Chinese American history at that time. This project stemmed from a few of my main historical interests, which include women’s history, Chinese history, and military history. Right now, I am working in a work study position at the Department of Literature as their Graduate Coordinator, which has been great so far! I am also working with the 1882 Foundation in my practicum course, so I am excited to see where our project goes!
I decided to pursue a master’s in public history when I figured out, after a long time being unsure, that out all of my interests, history was the one that I wanted to have a career in. From a young age, I have been fortunate enough to travel to many different countries and exploring these cultures and visiting museums in these places also led me to this path. I have many career interests, but my top choices right now include curatorial work at a museum, a historical research or writing-related position, and working as a federal historian. My research projects and courses in history in undergrad were some of my favorite academic experiences, so it has been amazing delving back into this in public history, and now with digital history!
While I have not had a lot of direct experience in digital history, I am thrilled to learn more about it in this course. Digital history is such an important part of the field, especially now, and I look forward to improving my skills in this area to benefit my future work in public history. My past work at my undergrad university library had me working in similar areas, such as being trained in in various academic technology platforms and learning about information and media literacy, among other things. I also wrote personal blogs for both of my experiences abroad in undergrad, which include a semester in 2018 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a summer internship in 2019 in Beijing, China. I really enjoyed doing this for these trips, so I am also excited to bring those skills to this course and our blog!