Reflection: Rachel Kirby’s PhD Internship in the Humanities with the Boston Red Sox
Many graduate students have a favorite work spot, but few can say that they’ve written in an empty, sun-drenched Fenway Park while perched atop the Green Monster. Yet Rachel Kirby, PhD candidate in the American & New England Studies program at BU, had this unique experience, among many others, while working with the Boston Red Sox as a PhD Intern in the Humanities, a program cosponsored by the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs and the BU Center for the Humanities.
Rachel’s internship involved providing research, writing, and programming support to the iconic baseball team’s historian, Gordon Edes, with whom she collaborated on projects ranging from an article for Red Sox Magazine on “the first all-female broadcast booth” to interdisciplinary blog posts that highlight the wide-reaching subjects and historical events that constitute Red Sox history, such as the Great Popcorn Machine Fire of 1974.
“I was flipping through a ‘this day in Red Sox history’ type book looking for items that could make for interesting blog posts, and I came across a mention of a game in Chicago that was delayed because a popcorn machine caught fire in the top of the eighth inning,” Rachel said. “I tracked down newspaper coverage of the game, and the oddities kept getting better and better: crowds gathered in the field while the fire was being put out, a kid tried to steal home plate, someone streaked through the outfield.” Rachel’s research into the Great Popcorn Machine Fire of 1974, which you can read about here, was featured in a segment commemorating the event’s 45th anniversary and was presented by Gordon Edes on the New England Sports Network’s pregame coverage.
Rachel also attended BoSox, “the official booster club of the Boston Red Sox,” events, she said, and performed an assortment of tasks typical for the team historian. “Every week and day looked a bit different,” Rachel remarked. “But a typical day would involve my reading books on Red Sox history, doing newspaper searches to help fill in holes in stories, or going through boxes of uncatalogued materials (magazines, letters, pamphlets, notes) to take an inventory for future use.”
Rachel also enjoyed the opportunity to conduct interviews with important but less studied figures from the Red Sox’s storied past. “I got to see a little bit of everything and gain a sense of the wide variety of tasks that fall under [Gordon’s] umbrella as a historian,” Rachel said.
A self-professed non-expert in baseball, Rachel was pleasantly surprised by the many new discoveries that her PhD Internship in the Humanities entailed, while it also expanded what she thinks of as possible for a career in public humanities.