Reflection from a Larry Morris Memorial Scholarship Recipient: Emma Mincks

You may remember Emma Mincks, one of our 2020 winners of the Larry Morris Memorial Scholarship for research by a University of New Mexico student in the area of spiritual/mystical literature. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature, currently working on research for her dissertation, and she had planned to use the Morris Scholarship to fund her trip to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Belgium last year.  She is researching Victorian literature and colonizers’ political use of the idea of savage spirituality to undermine indigenous people's spiritual/mystical relationship with the land and nature in a time of rapid urbanization and industrialization.

She recently wrote me to let us all know about how her scholarship-funded research plans had gone awry. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her overseas flights had all been canceled. Instead, she moved to South Dakota to become a full-time caretaker to her grandfather, until his passing. There, she contracted Covid, despite taking great caution. After she recovered, she felt the spirit of her grandfather pushing her forward, and she decided to fly to Europe after all and pursue her research project. Here is her letter to us.

After having a pretty severe case of the Covid-19 disease and purchasing an antibody infusion, I decided to get on a plane. I was extremely determined that my suffering would not be for nothing, and felt guided in my purpose. I had put my hopes on hold before that point; even though I had funding, I hadn’t been able to do what was needed because of the pandemic.  Throughout the past year, I had been studying Covid and how it spreads, and I was the most careful (and paranoid) person I encountered. Getting on a plane had been unfathomable before I’d had Covid. After that, I knew that I would be protected for at least a few months until I could get vaccinated; I knew that I wasn’t going to endanger other people, and that I could keep myself and others safe while traveling.

Additionally, I felt the spirit of my grandfather pushing me forward. He was a very confident person who had raised me and whom I moved home to South Dakota to help my family take care of from August 2020 onward. This was yet one life change in a long “items of unplanned events'‘ on the list of pandemic events. My grandfather had been confident, but now I was too. I was strong. I knew what I needed to do.

This time has been invaluable to my learning. For funders trying to decide if it’s still worth it to give out scholarships, I would argue that it is. Even during the lockdowns, being in the location I was researching was invaluable to help connect me back to the language, culture, and history of the place. Seeing historical landmarks and places discussed in the histories I was reading, going on outdoor tours, and being in countries I had only read about in literature all helped make the places more concrete and enriched my work so much more.

I don’t think that it is truly possible to get a sense of a place you are studying, what Raymond Williams terms the “structure of feeling,” without being in the places I’ve been in the past few months. Although there have been huge strides made in terms of digitization, especially during this year, I would argue that the experience of being in the archives in person and seeing, feeling, and touching documents in person, and the “incidental interactions” with archivists, librarians, and people living in the location being studied, add substantially to one’s understanding of the topic.

It’s one thing to read something and understand what it says, but I think that adding the context of the place and the nuances and critiques of historical “fact” come primarily through discussion and through experience of a space and the inheritors of that historical narrative. There are still many items that have not been digitized and there would be no other way to access them outside of an in-person visit or an unaffordable and time-consuming copy request.

Traveling during the pandemic for any reason but even for research, however, is not for the faint of heart. There are a few reasons that being a traveling researcher during this time is extra difficult.

As other researchers I’ve spoken to have commiserated with me about, it is often seemingly impossible to convey what my work is to non-academics. While I don’t have to go into an office for a certain amount of time in this work, it is extremely time- consuming and emotionally exhausting (especially researching the history of British settler colonial frameworks). Teaching two classes a semester makes it challenging to carve out enough time to research thoroughly, process and discuss the information gathered, and then write and then synthesize it while still trying to consider my contemporary lens, the multiple perspectives of that historical moment, and the “uneven developments” of ideology, as Mary Poovey calls them.

Understanding even a one-year period of time in history and cultural production can take years, especially for someone from a different place and time. If we see how difficult it is to understand and theorize our own place and time, imagine the increased lack of clarity and need for deep research that comes with understanding the past. This is a very difficult and time-consuming job, but it is also one that is often under-appreciated and confusing for non-academics because it may look different for every researcher, and also looks different at each stage of the degree and beyond.

This illegibility was made even more obvious to me when I entered Ireland at the end of February. Not only was the country in the highest form of lockdown (I was only let in because I was just recovering from Covid myself and had antibodies), but the border patrol agent could not understand my work. Despite letters from my department, from various professors endorsing my work, scholarship acceptance letters, and a list of the archival materials I wanted to consult, she was frustrated that I did not have a specific institution that I would be paired with in Dublin. As an “independent researcher,” despite my ties with the University of New Mexico, I was an anachronism to her.  A bafflement. A non-category. A non-worker, and therefore a tourist.

I had to really fight for my position as a researcher and argue for the validity of my work, and for me to travel during the antibody window. I showed all documents that I had brought with me, but was also required to look up medical documentation of having Covid to enter the country. After about 45 minutes, she felt that I was telling the truth, but marked in my passport that I needed to leave the country and go to other parts of the United Kingdom after one month. I just had to hope and trust that these other places would open up, and then also allow me into their countries when the time came.

I made it, in large part, through determination. Scotland was first to reopen, and I was the first researcher that was allowed into the National Library after their lockdown. After years of having barely any time for my research because of my teaching obligations, I was ecstatic that the research I’d dreamed of was finally possible. The time spent between entering Dublin and the libraries opening was not wasted. I was able to read, do online research, and write more than I had been able to during the entire time I had been in graduate school (at least in that focused way).

Having that specific time and place to be alone with my thoughts was only possible through the funding I received through the Gallagher Scholarship and the Larry Morris Memorial Scholarship. The places I was renting were less expensive than staying in a hotel would be, but European rent costs are nothing to scoff at, despite discounted prices because of the pandemic. Being alone with my thoughts, reading, researching, and taking long walks, going on socially distanced historical and cultural tours, and getting to know people within the community during this “waiting time” was honestly invaluable to my work. I cannot express how grateful I am to have experienced that quiet and productive time, despite my impatience and restlessness at the time.

Nothing is quiet anymore. Edinburgh reopened, then London, then Dublin. I have been in constant email and scheduling sessions with the archivists and library catalogues from all of these places. I have been diligently fighting for my place in a reader’s seat. I have shown myself, and all of the people I’ve encountered, how serious and dedicated I am to my research. I want to be thorough. I want to make sure this opportunity is not wasted. I realize how special this time is, and how lucky and unusual it is that I am here at this time.

Each day I spend at least an hour organizing my upcoming week or two to make sure that I have put in requests when I need to, in order for them to be delivered to the library after being quarantined. Some documents or books are quarantined before and after request, so I generally have requested materials as early as two weeks in advance, and for some materials a month in advance. Some have been unavailable for reference because of storage location and pandemic limitations, so it’s been important to make long lists of my first, second, and third choices. In addition, many places have limits on appointments per week, and also time constraints during appointments (most archival appointments are between 3-5 hour time slots). Because of this, I would not recommend that scholars come unless they have at least a few weeks and a variety of places that they visit in order to make the most of the time when archives are open. I luckily was able to move from archive to archive, but I also needed more time to make new requests based on my readings at the end of the day than I always had.

My trip was originally going to include Belgium and much more time in Dublin, but because of the delays in my trip, and because the European Union has been a bit behind on vaccines and have more Covid protective measures still in place as a result, I will need to return to spend more time in those archives in the future if possible. What I have seen and learned by reading and following my instincts through the archives has shown me that when I let go and follow my gut feelings in my research, the results can be truly incredible. I have deepened my understanding of the time period, and I have also learned so much more in unexpected ways about how lands and people were valued during this time.

My work in the archives and my overall experience have vastly exceeded my initial hopes and expectations, despite all of the challenges. Looking at documents from the past has confirmed for me that we are still dealing with inherited “affects,” and that, by honestly processing the past, we can move towards a more equitable future. It is my hope that future scholars will also get this type of opportunity to travel and process the connectedness of all beings through time, space, and place.

-Emma Mincks, June/July 2021