Graduate Students Awarded Prestigious Library of Congress Fellowships

Pheolyn Hayes will hold the position of Junior Fellow in the Library of Congress’s “Archive of Public Broadcasting Online Exhibit Curation” program. With assistance from a Program Mentor, he will curate a new exhibit relating to public broadcasting’s coverage of the histories and cultures of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and/or communities of color over the past 70 years; materials will be drawn from digitally preserved programs within the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), and in particular from the National Audiovisual Conservation Center (NAVCC). This is part of the AAPB’s efforts to recover and digitally preserve public television and radio programs and make them accessible again. As a Junior Fellow, Pheolyn will identify and describe materials for a contemporary public. Pheolyn’s experiences as a television and media scholar will serve him well in this position.

Courtney Murray will hold the position of Junior Fellow in the Library of Congress’s “Researching the 19th and early 20th Century Black Press” project. She will perform research, write essays and increase discoverability of African-American newspaper titles available in the Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers database under the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). In 2021, this major initiative began to digitize a collection of miscellaneous 19th- and early 20th-century newspapers from the Black American press while expanding collection access and providing context for many of the individual newspaper titles. Courtney’s essays will provide additional context for the content in the newspapers, the communities they served, and the publishers and editors who created the newspapers.