Department of English
Lecture Series

“Like an August
Mushroom Hunt”
Serendipity, Creativity,
and a Sense of Place
in Archival Research

Professor Gesa Kirsch
Bentley College

Thursday, November 2, 2006
4 p.m. – 5 p.m.
101 Hamilton Smith Hall

Professor Kirsch will speak about archival research—both her research project (what she has learned so far and what she is still investigating about Dr. Mary Bennett Ritter, a physician, women's rights activist, and civic leader active in California at the turn of the last century) and the research process (what she has discovered about research methodology along the way). Drawing on her own work as well as that of other scholars, she will address the role of serendipity and chance encounters; the importance of location—a sense of place when studying historical subjects; questions of ethics and representation; the courage it takes to "speak back" to the archives; and the personal connections, passion, and excitement of archival work.

Dr. Gesa Kirsch is Professor of English at Bentley College, where she currently directs the Communication Across the Curriculum Program. She has also served as co-founding director of the Institute for Women in Leadership. She has authored or co-edited six books and published over two dozen articles and book chapters on topics such as feminism and composition studies, feminism and business ethics, qualitative research methodology, women’s role in higher education, women’s memoir, autobiography and oral history. She is currently editing, with Liz Rohan, Labor of Love: Research as a Lived Process (forthcoming from Southern Illinois UP).

Note: The first part of the title is taken from an essay by Robert J. Connors. "Dream and Play: Historical Method and Methodology." Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. Ed. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia Sullivan, Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992, p. 23.