Prior to the fall semester, the name Teresa Puelma de Orrego was all but lost to history. Now, her name, along with three others, has been found.

Early in the semester, students in Associate Professor of Spanish Vanesa Miseres’ “Women’s Culture in 19th-Century Latin America” course entered Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC). It would be the first of many visits.

The class description promised that students would explore “the cultural and intellectual contributions of women in 19th- and early 20th-century Latin America…Through literary texts written by women, alongside essays, fiction, and other cultural narratives…” Throughout the semester, they would collaborate with Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian Payton Phillips Quintanilla in Rare Books & Special Collections at the Hesburgh Libraries, attend events and work with materials from the Libraries’ collections.

“I wanted a class where we could see how literature is a central theme and activity for elite women in the 19th century in Latin America,” Miseres said. “But, literature goes beyond books; it can include archives and letters, memoirs, periodicals and magazines.”

During their first visit to RBSC, students were presented with several friendship albums, all created by women who lived in Latin America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to Puelma de Orrego, the bound volumes were made by Esmeralda Cervantes from Spain, as well as Luz de Sagaseta and María Enriqueta Camarillo, both from Mexico. Comparable to a scrapbook, the albums were filled with signatures, letters, mementos and memories of their creators’ lives. 

“The albums are unique yet familiar forms of material culture,” said Phillips Quintanilla. “When I was growing up, we made scrapbooks. Our students have grown up in a digital age; they may not make physical scrapbooks, but they can relate the idea to things that they’ve done online, like collecting photos, annotating them and curating memories.”

In that early visit, students were assigned a semester-long project; they would work in groups, choose one of the albums, and try to learn more about the author.

“Studying these albums brings to light people who were essentially lost to history,” Miseres said. “Taking the time to examine the contents of their albums can help us put together a narrative and reconstruct parts of their lives.”

Conducting research and detective work

From the first class in RBSC, senior Monica Schleg and her group were immediately drawn to Puelma de Orrego’s album.

“Immediately upon opening it, I knew we made the right decision,” Schleg said.

Even though the decision was right, it didn’t mean the research was easy. While some groups were able to find pieces of information online about the owners of the albums they chose, there was almost no information available about Puelma de Orrego. So, Schleg’s group became detectives using the only information they had: the album.

Schleg and another member of her group, who had both spent time studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, found their first clues on a page of the album filled with signatures from prominent Chilean figures.

“Reading some of the last names, Kate and I were immediately able to say, ‘Wait, that’s the name of that metro stop, or that last name correlates with the street that I lived on,’” she said. “We were so excited to make those connections and knew Teresa must have been a socialite to have signatures from such prominent figures.”

Throughout the semester, which involved more trips to RBSC, the group carefully studied each page of the album. 

“We would ask: What can we gain from this? Why would she put this letter on this page in this corner? Why would she pair this letter with this other letter? And, why would she have this page of signatures?” Schleg said. “You have autobiographies, but looking at something so personal and seeing it through the lens of its creator was something that I’ve just never experienced before.”

Although there was no public information about Puelma de Orrego online, the group was able to locate her name in a family tree on a genealogy website. Following that thread, Schleg emailed the owner of that tree and found herself connecting with one of Teresa’s direct descendants.

“I was so excited to talk to a real living family member,” Schleg said. “They didn’t really have any information I could use in the project, but I was given such a warm and receptive response. It was further evidence of the continuing theme we had encountered in Teresa’s album about the importance of family, which is also something that I observed during my time in Chile.” 

Making research discoverable and accessible

Studying the albums and finding information about their creators was only part of the class's task. Their next step was sharing the information.

“When we went into this, we explained to them that this wasn’t just going to be a term paper; their research would result in public-facing resources.” Phillips Quintanilla said.

During the semester, each group’s album was digitized for online upload, along with the students’ collected information. Julie Vecchio, co-interim director of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, was brought in to teach story mapping. A type of digital project that can incorporate various media formats — text, image, sound, video — along with maps to create an interactive digital narrative.

“Because of their versatility, story maps are a great tool to present a broad range of information,” Vecchio said. “In libraries, they’re a compelling way to contextualize and share digital collection materials, and in a workplace or learning or research setting, they are a dynamic way to share insights and engage in discourse with a variety of communities and audiences.”

Armed with the tools to showcase the results of their research and the newly digitized albums, students worked to make the friendship albums available to researchers worldwide.

But it didn’t stop there. In addition to creating digital exhibits, students created a physical exhibit that opened in RBSC in November and will remain on display until the end of the semester.

“You have these tangible historical albums in the Rare Books exhibit, and we’re bringing them into the digital world and modernizing the information to make it more accessible to people,” Schleg said.

If that wasn’t enough, Schleg’s group decided to go beyond the class requirements. After realizing that several famous individuals connected to Puelma de Orrego had Wikipedia pages, the team decided that the creator of their album also deserved one. 

“We learned the ways of the Wikipedia world,” Schleg joked. “It was outside of the project guidelines. It wasn’t part of the grade, but when you’re working with such cool and unique materials, you get passionate.”

The team is still working on final approvals for the page, which should be available soon. 

Worth the effort

Miseres has always integrated the Libraries into her teaching, using RBSC and the University Archives and arranging class visits, but this was the first time it has been the center of one of her classes.

“I was a little scared at the beginning because, as a teacher, you want to be in control of absolutely everything,” she said, “but with Payton and Julie, we’ve created a team.”

With that team, the students in Miseres’ class have added four new names to the historical record.

“It was just such a privilege to be able to work with such cool artifacts, especially from an understudied area of women’s history,” Schleg said. “Teresa’s and these other women’s stories deserve to be told. Bringing these four albums to life is just a testament that there is still work to be done, but that it can be done, and just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.”