PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As part of her research on the history of laundry and its laborers, Brown undergraduate Ellanora LoGreco made 1800s-era laundry soap from beef tallow and lye, sourced period linens and a washboard at an antique shop, and spent a day beside a bucket of boiling water over a wood fire, rubbing, scrubbing, rinsing and ringing out fabric over and over until it was clean.
“It was very much about my physical experiences: noticing how tired my arms were, how my back hurt the next day, and what the lye soap did to my hands,” LoGreco said. “My one day is nothing compared to the physical toll of a lifetime of work for laundresses, but studying what has traditionally been women’s work is an alternative way to study the history of people who aren’t written into historical archives.”
LoGreco pursued her project, “A History of Washing: Reconstructing the Labor of Laundry,” through the John Hay Library Undergraduate Fellowship Program, an eight-week, campus-based summer program that offers students an opportunity to delve into the library’s vast special collections with intensive research instruction.
Now in its sixth year, the fellowship program enables undergraduates to engage directly in research with rare books, manuscripts and other primary sources to develop original and compelling student-driven projects with one-on-one support from a librarian mentor, according to Heather Cole, who until recently served as head of special collections instruction at the Hay Library, where she co-led the fellowship program.
“This is the type of intensive research opportunity you’d typically get as a faculty member or graduate student, so it’s a unique opportunity for undergraduates that gives them a chance to really hone their research skills and practice,” Cole said. “It’s like a primary-source research boot camp.”
