Nancy Lopez, interviewee and participant in the 2009 Delaware Afro Latina oral histories project conducted by Alvina Quintana and her students in the class The Study of Women’s Studies: Pedagogy, Activism, and Material Culture (WOMS 410). The streaming video interview is part of the new digital collection released by the University of Delaware.

Afro-Latina histories

Library announces digital access to Delaware Afro-Latina oral histories collection

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2:56 p.m., Sept. 18, 2014--The University of Delaware Library has announced the opening of a new digital collection, the Delaware Afro-Latina oral histories collection. 

This collection of raw and edited footage of interviews of Afro-Latinas living in the area of Newark, Delaware, was created in 2009 by students in a course taught by Alvina Quintana, associate professor of women and gender studies, Black American studies, and Latin American and Iberian studies at the University of Delaware.

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That spring, Quintana taught the course The Study of Women's Studies: Pedagogy, Activism and Material Culture (WOMS 410). It was a capstone course that explored the links between research and feminist activism, utilizing video production and the online virtual world Second Life. 

The coursework involved creating videotaped interviews of 10 Afro-Latinas, women of African and Latin American heritage, in the Greater Newark area. The topics covered in interviews range from childhood, ethnic identity and upbringing to career goals and social advocacy.

Twenty students from Quintana’s class worked in groups of two to produce three-minute video documentaries drawn from each of their 60-90 minute interviews. 

The capstone course culminated with a temporary exhibition on the project that was hosted by the Center for Material Culture Studies. Six documentaries were featured in an online exhibition, hosted in Second Life, and the exhibition was presented to the public on May 28, 2009, in a program at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.

The now digitized interviews were originally recorded onto Mini-DV tapes. All 10 interviews are accompanied by production DVDs containing the shorter edited interviews, which are interspersed with images and music. 

Original recordings and supporting materials are preserved in Special Collections at the University of Delaware Library located on the second floor of the Morris Library. The online finding aid to the oral history collection links directly to the digitized and streaming interviews, which are hosted on UDSpace, the digital institutional repository of the University of Delaware.

Creation of the collection and commitment to preserving the Delaware Afro-Latina oral histories collection was a collaboration between Quintana and the library.

Digitization of the Delaware Afro-Latina oral histories collection was a collaboration between library staff in the Manuscripts and Archives Department, the Center for Digital Collections and the Library Server and Data Management Department.

About Special Collections

Holdings of Special Collections of the University of Delaware Library include books, manuscripts, maps, prints, photographs, broadsides, periodicals, pamphlets, ephemera and realia from the 15th to the 21st century. 

The collections complement the library's general collections with particular strengths in the subject areas of the arts; English, Irish and American literature; history and Delawareana; horticulture; and history of science and technology. 

The University of Delaware Archives is separately administered and comprises university records and history of the institution. Special Collections is located on the second floor of the Morris Library.

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