Last Spring I took my first French history class with Professor Willa Z. Silverman. I was excited for the course, FR351, but even more excited about the honors option that Professor Silverman and I had come up with. My favorite historical French period is the “Belle �poque,” which is understood to have begun in the late 19th century and flourished until World War I. This period of peace and prosperity is often associated with a certain “joie de vivre,” a French expression that means to take pleasure in life. Tourists from all over the world started traveling to France to experience new forms of art and architecture, to visit the 1900 world’s fair, and to embrace the French way of living at the time.
I had such a craving to know what this time period was like and how tourists from all over the world perceived France during their visits. Professor Silverman told me about a unique collection of diaries in the Special Collections Library here at University Park. These diaries were written by tourists traveling to France during the 19th century; they were exactly what I always hoped I would find!
After spending hours and hours in the Special Collections room I compiled several interesting papers, and even taught my class some of the information I had gathered over the semester; information that related directly to our class. Professor Silverman must have noticed my enthusiasm for this type of work because she approached me once the class was over with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
She has been researching a man named Henri Vever, who was an upper-class jeweler from the late 19th century. A significant amount of the information that she has compiled on him came from a collection of his personal diaries. Unfortunately, in this day and age, diaries that are hundreds of years old are not in ideal condition, however invaluable they may be as documents. To solve this problem she asked me if I would be interested in transcribing the diaries to develop an electronic copy of the collection. I immediately accepted and was so excited. Not only did I get to read his diaries, I got to work with each word as I transcribed, and I got to know Henri very well.
I am a Junior at Penn State now, and I am a French and Spanish major with a Political Science minor. I am a Schreyer Honors student and a Paterno Fellow, both of which have led me to amazing opportunities like the one I described above. Outside of my academic world I have been a Spirit Leader for the past two years on the Rules and Regulations committee for THON. THON has also been a huge motivator and joy throughout my Penn State career.
This semester I am looking forward to continuing my research with Professor Silverman, and I am excited to post more details on some up-and-coming projects that we are going to start once the transcription process is over.