Hey!! I'm Eloise and this is my blog! I'm a '28 from New Holland, Pennsylvania. I love to read and write in my free time and I'm so excited to get involved in clubs at Dartmouth. I love exploring the outdoors and I can't wait to go on more trips with the Dartmouth Outing Club. I hope you enjoy my blog!
This course covers modern American history through an imperial lens. It was my first time learning about these topics and events in-depth, and I learned so much! The class focuses on small group discussions and having nuanced conversations about assigned readings. It was the perfect class for my first fall! I cannot recommend this class enough!
This course was my first-year seminar, a portion of the Dartmouth first-year writing sequence. In this class, we read four Jane Austen novels and discussed them as a class. The best part was our final project: creating an exhibit to be displayed in Baker-Berry Library! In partnership with Rauner Special Collections Library, we worked with Austen's first editions and designed an exhibit to celebrate Austen’s 250 Birthday.
First-years at Dartmouth are required to take both a writing and seminar course. Options for these classes range from all departments, so there is a class for every interest!
For my first-year seminar class, I chose to take "Reading Jane Austen." In this class, we read four Jane Austen books (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion). In addition to small group discussions and writing essays about the books, we also worked on an unconventional final project: creating an exhibit!
The goal was to create a cohesive exhibit that explored the Austen books we read and discussed their themes of love and money to commemorate Jane Austen's 250th birthday.
As a class of 16 students, we were split up into four groups of four. Each group was assigned a book, for which they were in charge of designing an exhibit case. My group received Emma, which I was so excited about!
Our exhibit case!
While we learned and read about Austen's themes in class, we also had to curate a physical exhibit that would convey these themes in an understandable way to the Dartmouth and greater Hanover community.
To do this, we consulted the archives! In collaboration with Rauner Special Collections Library and its wonderful staff, my class worked with Rauner's collection of Jane Austen books, including first editions of the four books we read!
Every week, we would walk over to Rauner as a class and explore multiple editions of Austen's books, as well as other books from the time period. At this time, we made tough choices about what to include in our exhibit case.
In addition to guidance from Professor Dever, library employees Jay Satterfield and Laura Barrett helped us decide what to put in our case and how to present it to the public.
In the end, we chose seven pieces, including a first-edition copy of Emma and original artwork from the 1800's. Each piece was accompanied by a fifty-word blurb explaining its meaning to the greater case and exhibit theme.
Writing these blurbs was really challenging because they had to be concise but also inclusive to an audience that included both Austen scholars and people who had never read an Austen book before.
Me in front of my exhibit case!
After finalizing our pieces and text, the exhibit case was put together by Samantha Milnes, who did a wonderful job executing our vision.
The exhibit was installed in Baker-Berry Library, and we hosted a grand opening event, which doubled as Jane Austen's 250th birthday party.
The event was so awesome! I invited all my friends to see the exhibit, and many faculty members came to explore it, too. There was cake and fun Austen-inspired activities.
It was so amazing to see all of my and my classmates' hard work come together into an exhibit I can share with others. Our exhibit will be up in the library until the middle of the summer, and I can't wait for more people to explore it and maybe learn a thing or two about Jane Austen!
During winter term, I participated in the inaugural program, Tuck Pathfinders, which connected first-year students with Dartmouth alums and provided us with career advice!
