What is your job/position?
I'm a book and paper conservator in the BYU Library. I repair rare and circulating materials in the HBLL, help with exhibits, sometimes co-curate exhibits, deal with periodic floods, am a member of the library's Art in the Library team that manages the public permanent art in the library as well as student and visiting artist exhibitions, and I mentor student employees, many of whom wish to do this work professionally.
I'm also a wife and mother to a delightful 5 year old. I love my conservation work, but my family work matters infinitely more. As a family, we are learning about neurodivergence, child development, building imagination into everything, not throwing things when we get mad, making new foods, gardening, stories, bikes, and music (we are all musicians).
Describe the path that took you from your American Studies degree to your current career or life situation.
While a BYU student, I worked in the Lee Library in Book Repair/Conservation. So I guess you might say my student job had more to do with where I landed in my career than my American Studies degree. However, AmSt is multidisciplinary, and so is my job, which involves craft, art, science, and history. Multidisciplinarity has always felt vitally important to me, and that was reinforced during my studies at BYU. History has always been important to me, but especially holistic history. History matters in my job as well, especially with the imperative to maintain historical integrity in the artifacts we are stabilizing and repairing.
Upon graduation I immediately moved to Bloomington, Indian,a to live with my sister for a year. I worked as a research assistant and did other odd jobs while taking a break from academia and just living life, figuring out grad school ideas, and preparing for the GRE. I was interested in TESOL, public folklore, and museum education. I took the GRE and applied to TESOL programs but didn't feel right about those options. I knew I didn't want to be in academia. I love learning but boy does academia have some major problems.
I moved back to Orem/Provo (where I'm from), got a job in the Orem Public Library, and continued to live life with my focus beginning to hone back in on museum/library work. I will say that my American Studies degree certainly impacted how effective I was in my work in the public library. I worked at all the reference desks and needed to be a generalist. The foundation of cultural literacy I developed in my major definitely helped with this.
With my 4+ years in book repair, I began to explore programs to learn more of the craft, realizing I really wanted to continue working behind the scenes with my hands and handling artifacts—not just researching and writing about them. I have a strong bent towards teaching and also explored Museum Education programs. I had taken the Art History museum class during undergrad, and I believe that was an elective for American Studies. That was an important class for me. Even though it's a library, the archives and exhibits programs in the HBLL basically function like a museum. My awareness of how exhibition teams can work in museums that came from the museum class has been useful in not being totally ignorant about how these things work.
I ended up taking the BYU bookbinding class, as I'd never made any NEW books—just repaired them, to see if I loved it enough to spend lots of money at a trade school. Realizing I did, I visited the oldest trade school in the country—The North Bennet Street School in Boston's North End—which has a bookbinding program. That visit clinched it. It was a marvelous place, and I knew I needed to be there.
Then came the inevitable questions from friends and family: "Are there jobs?" "Is it a master's degree?" (Nope. Just a lowly certificate.) "Can you make money with that?" "What will you do next?" I knew it felt right to go there, and it would be fine. And indeed those were two of the most glorious years of my life. I was still single and could easily move wherever and do whatever with my life. The school was 2 years, fulltime bench bookbinding and book repair. I also worked in a women's shelter at the time with moms and toddlers, and fulfilled several conservation internships at different libraries. After graduating, I completed one last internship at the Church History Library and then, miraculously, landed a 3/4 time position in the HBLL as the Book Repair Assistant just before the late 2008 hiring freeze went into effect. After 4.5 years in that position, I obtained the full time position I currently have. And since all the repair operations in the library merged, I work on both circulating and rare items and help mentor 10 students—which fulfills my yen for teaching.
I never had a plan. I chose American Studies because I had an amazing high school history class, have always loved old things, and because I wanted more than history. And I especially wanted to study things like film history, music, pop culture, and all the economic and social factors that impact those. I studied what I was drawn to the most and something that was broad and inclusive. I relaxed into my life unfolding one step at a time, followed the Spirit, and have been incredibly blessed and fulfilled.
What are the specific competencies you cultivated as an American Studies student that you now use in your professional life and that set you apart from your colleagues?
I developed awareness of how everything is connected through my exposure to different topics and time periods in American history and research projects I was assigned in these classes. The American film class taught by the then HBLL Motion Picture Archive curator was one of the most impactful I've ever taken in terms of helping us see culture as a product of economics, politics, etc. How is this important in my day-to-day work in the lab? Well, I convey it to my students in casual conversation. And it can help us understand the meaning and value behind the artifacts we work with, and how and why it's important that they've been collected and preserved here. When I feel that the items I handle have value and understand where that value comes from, I do a better job. When I can convey that context to my students, they encounter a new perspective on something in life and also care more and do a better job. What I learned in my undergrad was only the tip or the tip of the iceberg, but it left me knowing that there is always more to the story behind a person, place, or event—that more things are connected than we realize and that context matters. Or maybe that context is everything.
Economics, for example, has everything to do with the history of bookbinding—what materials are used, how things were bound, whether or not machines were used, and the gradual degradation of the materials and quality of bookbinding over time. I love the history of how bookbinding structure has changed over time, and it has everything to do with what is going on in the world at the time. Design history, for example, helps me appreciate book and book cover design. I can often date a book by its cover, which then tells me all sorts of things about how it was made, what kind of paper was used and style of sewing, and so on.
Let's say American Studies helps cultivate a competency in openness. The major allows almost everything, it seems, to be on the table and worth exploring and studying. This is HUGE. Anything can be worth exploring and digging deeper into. Hierarchies of what matters hopefully blown apart. I can't comment on how this sets me apart from my colleagues. We all bring different skills, knowledge, and awarenesses to the table. Hopefully all our contributions help us function more wholly and effectively.
What are some of the surprising ways in which your American Studies degree has helped you in your professional or personal life?
Kerry Soper taught a Humanities class on the 1950s and 1960s pop culture (I think) in America that stays with me to this day. About 8 years ago, I was fortunate enough to co-curate a library exhibit on an Latter-day Saint swimsuit designer prominent in this time period whose family had just donated her papers, as well as about 65 swimsuits. Kerry Soper's class built a love and enthusiasm for this period that fed the energy and enjoyment I had for getting to know this collection, Rose Marie Reid the designer, and working passionately on this exhibit with a couple other co-curators. Again, it lent a good foundational context.
As I mentioned before, Jim D'arc's film class has forever impacted how I find the synthesis between economics, politics, social movements, and art. Also an R class taught about Walt Disney.
In my personal life, the classes I took, and all the classes I couldn't take for lack of time and money, vastly expanded what I was curious about and wanted to learn more about on my own.
What do you wish you had known as an American Studies student? What advice would you share with current students?
19 years ago is way too far back to remember if there's anything I wish I had known. The program is likely better now, especially if people are really taking advantage of experiential learning opportunities and grants. If there isn't any sort of capstone, experiential learning requirement, there should be. I remember thinking, after taking a History of the South class, how even more impactful the class would have been if we could've all traveled to some of the places we had read and talked about. Like gone and spent a half a day in a cotton field, visited battle sites or historic homes of political and literary figures, visited a Gullah Geechee community.
Advice for students: If people keep saying the old thing that American Studies is just a jumping-off point for law school, medical school, or business school, they need to stop. Yes, more schooling is in front of you after this degree, but you can really go anywhere with it. If you've found a direction you love and are passionate about or feel drawn to, don't be cowed by people's obnoxious questions about work and money to follow.
*You can contact Christina with questions about her American Studies story at christina_thomas@byu.edu.