Wilson Library exhibit on history of women at UNC now available online

Students in UNC professor Katherine Turk's spring history class curated Wilson Library's new exhibit, Climbing the Hill: Women in the History of UNC. And although the exhibit was set to be unveiled in the spring, Wilson Library has made access to it online-only for the time being. 

A physical unveiling for the exhibit has not yet been set. 

The exhibit houses 48 historical pieces, featuring artifacts such as the diploma of Sallie Walker Stockard, the first woman to graduate from UNC, and photos depicting the Food Workers' Strike, which was led by women of color. 

Students were divided into groups to focus on a specific theme and bounce ideas off of one another, said Kate Karstens, a UNC graduate and former Daily Tar Heel staffer who was part of Turk's spring history class. She said Turk oversaw the project, and it felt student-led and student-achieved.

Turk said her students were magnificent, citing their enthusiasm and curiosity as key to the project. She said Wilson Library tasked the team with finalizing the exhibit by the end of the semester, which necessitated oversight, but not at the expense of student engagement. 

“We had to strike a balance in giving them the freedom to explore and analyze and draw their own conclusions, but also give enough guidance and guardrails so that this task did not feel overwhelming to do in a semester,” Turk said. 

When Wilson Library opens and displays the student-written texts and artifacts, the exhibit will also feature a podcast and QR codes with snippets of oral history interviews, Turk said.

Wilson Library hosts a student-curated exhibition every two years. The physical display will reside for three months on the third floor of Wilson Library in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room. Special Collections Exhibits Coordinator Rachel Reynolds said Climbing the Hill will remain online for now. 

“We had always planned for (the exhibition) to be online," Reynolds said. "One thing that the library is moving towards and should be able to do from now on is to post an online version of all our physical exhibitions. We would like to do that so we can increase our reach.”

Turk's history class faced distinct challenges in creating the exhibit. Reynolds said an exhibition typically takes at least a year to develop, not a semester. She said graduate student Lara Lookabaugh helped speed up the project by sifting through the vast library resources for the students. 

Reynolds said midway through the semester when the pandemic hit, class sessions had to be held through video chat.

“We had about a week’s notice, and the news was flying around and we suspected that we were going to close any day," she said.  

Turk said the team defined the scope of the project, women at UNC, very broadly to include workers, students and community members. She said this reflects diverse experiences and shows that, from the beginning, women have been drivers of change at UNC. 

“The history of UNC is women’s history and I don't think you could tell the history of this campus without women,” Turk said. “Women are just as diverse as the rest of American society, so their concerns related to gender are bound up in issues relating to race, class, region and sexuality.”

Karstens said the problems that some women detailed in their diary entries, which are now chronicled in Wilson, resonated with her own experience on campus. 

“I get exiled from male peers in study sessions and I get told that I have a resting bitch face and I get told by a professor that I am too eager when I sit in the front row," she said. "These things are still happening today.”

Karstens related the exhibit to UNC's recent release of 15 sexual assault records, listing violations of UNC's sexual assault policy since 2007. 

“I feel like we are always having to put our hand up and say, ‘Hey, life on this campus is not the same for everyone and some of us don’t get to walk home after our lab ends at 8 p.m. by ourselves,'" Karstens said. "That is terrifying."

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