This is my first week as a CCEPS Archival fellow at the Honnold/Mudd Library, and I am looking forward to the semester ahead. As a graduate student in History and Archival Studies, I bring some theoretical knowledge and practical experience into the fellowship with me. My hope is that my work here will sharpen my skills and challenge me in new ways.
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I will be processing the Matt Garcia Papers. Matt Garcia received his PhD in History from Claremont Graduate University in 1997. Specifically, I will be working with the second half of a larger collection donated by Garcia, which contains research materials gathered in the process of writing his second book From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement.
Working with Garcia’s collection should prove to be exciting and stimulating for two reasons. One, I am interested to become familiar with the research of an alumnus from my school’s program. His research covers a portion of US History that I am not well versed in, so I am eager to learn from the body of research present in the collection. In an indirect sort of way, I suppose I will be Matt Garcia’s student this semester. Second, I already have some experience with the first half of his collection which I helped process as part of a practicum for the Introductory Archives course I completed in the Fall of 2018. This half was created in the process of writing his first book, A World of its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970.
I plan to describe and arrange this collection to the best of my abilities, in order to facilitate research into his work in the future. Thank you for reading and thank you to CCEPS for giving me this great opportunity.