Tammy Pike, senior instructor of history, has woven South Carolina women’s history into her Service Learning courses in a way that brings local history to life. Pike has established a significant partnership with Joe Hursey, historian at the Piedmont Historical Society. In her HIST U325 course, Women in the US Since 1865, students transcribed archived letters dating back to 1865 that belonged to the women of the prominent Piedmont-area Payne and Peden families.
Students not only transcribed the letters into digital form, but they also created an interactive online digital exhibit for the USC Upstate Library to house and contextualize the transcriptions. The Letters of Blanche Peden Payne Digital Exhibit is available online for visitors to the Piedmont Historical Preservation Society as well as general audiences.
During the course of the class, students learned about women’s lived experiences during the time period, allowing the content of the historical letters to come alive for her students.
“Students have learned that young women experienced the same concerns that many of them have today,” Pike explained. “Many of these women worried over potential husbands, what dresses they would wear to church on Sunday, how they were doing in school, if they would be able to go to the county fair, and how their friends and loved ones were doing during very turbulent times like WWI and the Great Depression.”
The digital exhibits created by the students allow community members who are unable to travel to the museum as well as scholars near and far to gain access to the letters and transcripts without having to physically visit the museum.
Pike’s students have also gained valuable professional experience as presenters at historical society special events. These guest lectures have drawn hundreds of community members and supported the historical society’s fundraising for the historical restoration of its future home, the Piedmont Y.W.C.A., which was one of the oldest of such facilities in South Carolina.
