Students share their history research through a not-so-ancient Scroll
How did Los Angeles streetcars help promote women’s rights? What role did names on maps play in erasing native peoples from California? How did contributions from foreign individuals aid humanitarian efforts during the Rwandan genocide?
For answers to these questions and more, consult The Scroll.
Across disciplines in the natural and social sciences and the humanities, research constitutes a significant portion of the undergraduate experience offered at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. A new, online journal produced by undergraduates in the Department of History department aims to bring some of the research on historical topics to light while enhancing the research experience for students.
“The Scroll allows student work to be read by a larger audience, and it also gives students the opportunity to learn how to evaluate and edit historical work,” says Lindsay O’Neill, associate professor (teaching) of history at USC Dornsife.
The free online journal launched last year, and the first issue appeared in spring 2020. Senior Sean Silvia, the journal’s founder and former editor-in-chief, says the publication came about because undergraduates were seeking to hone their writing skills, gain experience submitting papers and have an outlet to present their research work to the public. Silvia approached O’Neill with the idea, and he crafted a journal proposal for the department’s undergraduate studies committee, which reviewed and accepted it.
“The journal was definitely modeled on other undergrad research journals. Our journal is unique to USC, however, as I wanted to establish with the first [journal] cover — a black-and-white photo of Bovard [Administration Building],” Silvia explains.
Sean Silvia founded The Scroll to publish undergraduate history research. (Photo: Courtesy of Sean Silvia.)
The Scroll’s editorial board comprises nine students and a faculty review board with six faculty members.
Invitations to submit a paper are sent out at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. Submissions undergo a blind review process, first by the student board, and then by the faculty review board.
For the first issue, 21 papers were submitted, and although the journal holds no limits on the number of articles in a given issue, only four passed muster this round.
“We are looking for papers that argue a historical thesis well, are nuanced and offer up original ideas. Papers that situate themselves within the broader scholarship on their topic particularly stood out to us,” Silvia says, adding that the editors also like to see papers that make use of items from USC holdings, whether images from the USC Digital Library, interviews housed at the USC Shoah Foundation or manuscripts from the USC Libraries Special Collections.
Ideally, students would present their articles during a journal conference, “The Scroll Unrolled,” held once per semester, but the inaugural meeting last spring was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fall semester’s conference will be virtual, Silvia says, and the editorial board is mulling over ideas for guest speakers.
O’Neill observes that she has been impressed by Silvia’s initiative as well as the work of the student editors.
“My favorite thing about The Scroll is that it was student inspired and is student run. We faculty are there just as quality control. We read the papers they are thinking about including and give our two cents, but it is up to the students to choose the papers and to edit them.”
Although The Scroll is currently accepting papers only from USC students, Silvia and O’Neill say they might open submissions up to students from other schools in the future.