Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library | Archives Fellowships Program
Special Collections and Archives is pleased to welcome four Fellows to the library for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Asian/American Center Collection Fellowship
Bianca Oliva (they/she) will process the records of the Queens College Asian/American Center with the goal of publishing a finding aid for the collection using ArchivesSpace. Oliva will also catalog digital photos and digitize important documents for sharing on JSTOR.
The Asian/American Center at Queens College was founded in 1987 with a mission of developing community-oriented research to analyze the multicultural diaspora experience of Asians in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. The collection includes reports, publications, fliers, and photographs.
Shirley Klein Rare Book and Manuscript Fellowship
Olivia Zisman (she/her) will focus on arranging, preserving, and describing oversized archives collections currently housed in flat file drawers. This includes political posters, design renderings/drawings, World War II posters, photographic prints, and more. Zisman will house these materials in oversized folders and create finding aids for the collections in ArchivesSpace.
Freda S. and J. Chester Johnson Civil Rights and Social Justice Archives Fellowship
Continuing the work of the Queering the Archives project of the last two years, Nancy Lambert (she/her) will process the personal papers of writer, playwright, director, and Queens College alum Edward M. Cohen.
Cohen’s corpus spans 50 years, from his first novel $250,000 (published 1967) to the recent prize-winning story collection Before Stonewall (published and awarded the Awst Press Book Prize in 2019). His personal papers, donated by his family in January 2024, include manuscripts and drafts, published works, notes, and a scrapbook. She will create a finding aid for the collection in ArchivesSpace.
Separately from the Cohen papers, Lambert will conduct 1-2 interviews for inclusion in the Queer at QC oral history project.
MFA Writing Fellow: BlackMass Publishing
Mundo Rivera will spend three months in residence at the archives conducting research in the BlackMass Publishing section of the Zine Collection with the goal of writing their own creative piece. The BlackMass materials consist of an extraordinary collection of limited-edition zines ranging in subject matter from artists to social justice and beyond.
The residency will culminate in the presentation of Rivera’s work at the QC MLS graduation in May 2025.
Download the flyer to see a full list of prior participants and their projects.