I was fortunate to be a UVM Humanities Center Fellow in the 2019-20 academic year, receiving a reduction in my teaching load and an opportunity to engage with several other fellows as we each pursued research projects. In February 2020, we presented work-in-progress updates for the campus community at a “Research Salon.” (Turnout was excellent! Thanks to all who attended!)
I enjoyed this effort to explain the consular service and my interest in the development of the state and the human elements of bureaucracy to a general audience of UVM community members. My title was “Masters of 187 Forms: US Consular Officials and the Uneven Projection of US Sovereignty Abroad, 1856-1924,” and I used a hypothetical case study of a Canadian family arriving at the St. Catherines, Ontario consular agency in 1896 seeking the necessary paperwork for entry into the United States to illustrate some of the themes that are present in my larger project.
I also had some fun experimenting with “Smart Art” in PowerPoint…
