As mentioned in our previous weblog entry our project is about the magnificent, magical, mysterious creatures we all know, whether we read about them or dream about —them—dragons.

When asked to devote my time to the McNeely book collection at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Library’s Special Collections Department, I felt an initial sense of joy which quickly turned into anguish. Comprising around 1400 volumes, the McNeely Collection harbors a pretty extensive corpus of Latin American books written mostly in Spanish.

It's one thing to say that the humanities touch every aspect of our lives.  It's quite another to actually be acutely aware of it, especially when taking part in public humanities events and multiple media.

My short time as an Undergraduate Research Fellow for The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP has already taught me so much about research, and specifically about zoot suits in El Paso. I am currently working on a project with Dr. Melissa Esmacher, an Associate Professor of History at El Paso Community College. The project involves researching a riot, or near-riot, that happened in downtown El Paso on June 19, 1943.

Introducing younger people to the humanities can be an especially difficult challenge, especially when the subject may seem too far removed from the present day.  This is the challenge that our group decided to meet head-on in our current project of connecting the poetry and life of poet William Wordsworth to twenty-first century students in West Texas.