This summer I have the great pleasure of working with several excellent scholars accepted into the ASCENT Summer Training Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health: Abhilasha Khatri and Vedi Vekaria. Our research project involves identifying and analyzing historical artifacts housed in the University of Utah’s Marriott Library Special Collections that shed light on reproductive health practices and care in the twentieth century, particularly in relationship to rural, Indigenous, and/or underserved communities in the Intermountain West.
To get our research started, Rachel Ernst, Reference Librarian for Special Collections, showed our team (which also includes PhD students Emma Murdock and Gabby Garza) around the Special Collections Reading Room (see below) and walked us through the procedures for searching and accessing archival materials. We are really lucky to have Rachel helping us gain access to these rare and one-of-a-kind documents. I can’t wait to see what we end up discovering in this process!
