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Becoming a Part of History

A Leadership Project in Brazilian Archives

Story by Daisy Arvonen | Photo Courtesy of Sarah Davila

Marcy Tagg (pictured second from right above), a senior Honors student majoring in Comparative Literature and Portuguese Studies, spent last summer immersing herself in new cultures, exploring museums, and wandering the busy streets of São Paulo, Brazil. The trip was part of her Honors Leadership Development Experience (LDE) project and expanded her cultural perspectives through an internship at the University of São Paulo.

As an intern, Tagg documented information from the personal archives of Brazilian intellectuals. She conserved, cleaned and organized documents, and spent time researching. The main project she worked on was with a professor doing research on Mário de Andrade, a Brazilian author. Flipping through pages of Andrade’s personal archives, Tagg recorded things he had written in margins and registered them digitally so others could access them easier.

Through her experiences, Tagg discovered the beauty of conserving and being a part of history. “So much has happened before us and so much more will happen after,” she said. “And here we are in the middle of it…we’re a part of a bigger whole.” She played her part by participating in every step of the preservation process. “I think in school we only see the finished product…so it was so cool to see it from start to finish, getting a document that’s been sitting in someone’s house for 100 years and cleaning it, and organizing it, and then using it for research,” she recalled.

Tagg explained that São Paulo is a big city that represents many different cultures, and it “was like a little bit of the whole world.” As she worked alongside people with different cultural backgrounds, she put aside her assumptions and learned from them. “I feel like it’s a good experience that nothing is necessarily a given. When you’re in your own culture, you assume X, Y, and Z. It was cool to put assumptions aside and just learn anything,” she said. Tagg especially loved working with the Brazilian librarians whose cultural differences and fun personalities taught her to value slowing down and connecting with the people around her. One librarian even took her bird watching sometimes!

Tagg and her peers in the project had originally thought that the internship was going to be at an art museum in São Paulo. They were surprised when they found out that it was going to be much different than what they had expected. Tagg encourages Honors students who encounter unexpected changes in their planned LDE projects to learn good communication skills and to embrace change. “Ask what you can, figure out what you can, and then let go of the rest because you’ll probably have awesome experiences that you weren’t even expecting or you didn’t even know you’d want, but they’ll be awesome either way,” she said.

During her adventures in Brazil, Tagg learned that every individual plays an important role in the world. In the process of preserving the past, she discovered that she was becoming a unique part of history herself.

Tagg is now working on her Honors thesis, "The Overstory and Torto Arado: American and Brazilian Perceptions of Environmentalism in Literature," and plans to graduate later this year.