The University of New Mexico Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communications Program, or DISC, created an online exhibit entitled “And Yet She Persisted: Documenting Women’s Lives in New Mexico.”
This exhibit is in celebration of Women’s History Month and seeks to recognize the achievements of women who have graduated from UNM, said Mary Wise, digital humanities librarian and assistant professor.
Wise collaborated with Amy Winter, DISC program specialist, to create the online exhibit. According to Wise, “And Yet She Persisted” will be an ongoing project and will be available even after Women’s History Month ends.
“This is an enduring digital humanities project, and this was phase one. This is an ongoing project that we will continue to work on, and we invite others to contribute to it,” Wise said.
“And Yet She Persisted” is a collection of data that shows the statistics of female graduation rates from UNM starting in 1916 until 1953. The project will eventually include statistics up until 2016, but Wise said there will need to be a new data source for this portion of the information.
The exhibit also includes five biographies about women who graduated from UNM. Each of these biographies tell the stories of women firsts at UNM, such as the first woman to graduate from UNM with an engineering degree and the first woman to earn a Ph.D., according to Wise.
“Women have so shaped UNM, just as UNM has shaped them. There are many stories of success, change and resistance that are exciting and reflect how women have contributed to this great campus,” Winter said.
This exhibit started off as a single question, Wise said. She wanted to know how many women have graduated since UNM’s founding with any degree. However, because there was so much rich data, an entire exhibit came out of it.
Winter said there are certain advantages to having an online exhibit. One of the primary advantages is that the project can change and grow organically, allowing extra time for additional information and research to be done, she said.
It was extremely interesting to learn more about these women’s lives, because a lot of the challenges they faced in their education and careers mirror the challenges women continue to face today, Wise said.
Lena C. Clauve was the dean of women at UNM for over 30 years. One of the stories she told was about her experience with sexual harassment, Wise said.
“This story fits smack dab in the middle of our current national dialogue,” Wise said. “When I was reading her biography, it felt like I was reading a Twitter feed about the #MeToo movement or the Time’s Up movement.”
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This exhibit gives visitors an opportunity to view the University Library material and take something away from it, Winter said. She hopes viewers will have questions about the exhibit, take that question and run with it.
“History is really relevant and sometimes that can get lost,” Wise said. “This project provides a connection with women from the past. It helps us see that these issues are ongoing, and there are things we still have to find solutions for.”
Megan Holmen is a freelance reporter for news and culture at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @megan_holmen.
