Supporting the research and learning of our faculty and students is part of the Libraries’ core mission. Here in the Special Collections department, we’re partnering with the Graduate School & International Education to host a graduate student speaker series to provide our students with the opportunity to share their research with our community. Recognizing that research is often done in isolation, this series aims to celebrate our graduate students’ work and engage with them as part of the scholarly community here at the U of A. Each of the speakers has used our collections to create a work of original research.

Kicking off the series was Arley Ward, a Ph.D. candidate in the History department. He presented his work titled “The Religious Right to Oppress? Gay Marriage, Slavery, Miscegenation and the History of Religious Exemptions.” Drawing on the White Citizens Council materials and the Billy James Hargis Papers, Ward’s talk focused on the “historical trend of justifying discriminatory behavior and outright oppression – from the defenders of slavery and segregation, to those who sought to protect the white race from the specter of miscegenation – as something endorsed by Christianity and, therefore, protected by the First Amendment.”

Our November speaker, Jama Grove, shared with us her research exploring the use of DDT – a chemical used as insecticide – in Arkansas agribusiness. Her research is based on the work of Arkansan agricultural entomologists William J. Baerg and Dwight Eisley, who posed that the chemical may cause more problems than it solved. As Grove explained, “Decades before Silent Spring brought national attention to DDT’s ecological consequences, researchers at the University of Arkansas saw problems and worked out ways to minimize chemical use.”

The final speaker for the fall semester was Sarah Riva, who presented a talk titled “Overthinking the Dissertation: One Grad Student’s Story of the Research Process.” Drawing from her experience researching the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, Riva explored her topic while considering the behind-the-scenes work that goes into writing a dissertation. 

Through these three presentations, participants began to learn about the depth and breadth of our department’s collections.

We invite you to contact us if you’ve done research using our collections and would like to be a part of our spring series: specoll@uark.edu.