Project lead: Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf (Louise R. Noun Chair in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies)
Vivero Fellow (Fall 2023): Libby Eggert
Edith Renfrow Smith ’37 is the namesake of Grinnell College’s newest residence, Renfrow Hall, which will open Fall 2024. Born, raised, and educated in Grinnell, the spry 109-year-old still recalls the streets and spaces of this small midwestern town where she spent her first 23 years as a girl and young woman.
This Vivero project will draw on mapping software; historical, family, and contemporary photos; and oral history interviews to provide a feel for the Grinnell of Mrs. Renfrow Smith’s girlhood (1914-1932). Using a storytelling interface such as HistoryPin, the fellow will help select 8-10 key sites (of residence, schooling, worship, work, recreation) and contextualize them with images as well as audio interview excerpts. The goal of the project is to enable members of the Grinnell community as well as visitors to take a digitally enabled walking tour of the places that nurtured Mrs. Renfrow Smith into the young woman who made institutional history in 1937 when she became the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College.
Vivero Fellow (Fall 2022): Nandika Jhunjhunwala
Born and raised in the town of Grinnell, Mrs. Edith Renfrow Smith ’37 is Grinnell College’s first Black alumna. At a spry 108 years of age, she’s also the College’s oldest living alumnus. Despite growing up African American in an overwhelmingly white rural community and being the only Black student during all of her four undergraduate years, Mrs. Smith carries a fierce sense of loyalty and belonging to the town and College. This Vivero project focuses on mapping key forms of connection and proximity that Mrs. Smith experienced and has recalled in multiple interviews given over the last four decades. During the 2022-23 academic year, the Vivero fellow will expand the existing Omeka website about Mrs. Smith (https://edithrenfrowsmith.sites.grinnell.edu/). Utilizing platforms (ArcGIS Online, StoryMaps) and visual resources (e.g., historical maps digitized and annotated with relevant contextual information, images, and quotes from Mrs. Smith), the Fellow will help convey what living and learning here were like for Mrs. Smith a century ago.
