Feature Story
Ariel Clark Silver’s Summer of Research at the Massachusetts Historical Society
Assistant Professor of English Ariel Clark Silver spent part of the summer at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston as the Alyson R. Miller Fellow, researching for her current book project, “The Conversationalists,” which focuses on the trailblazing work of five women who met with Margaret Fuller in the 1840s.
“My project looks at the ways in which this network of women work together and how their writings contribute deeply to women’s advancement in American culture,” said Silver. “I’m trying to offer a much more broadly gauged, robust view of how women were operating at such refined and energetic levels of ambition and achievement at such an early period in American history.”
In the 1840s, author and editor Margaret Fuller established a group of women who met together to discuss education, politics, and reforms. Out of these conversations came works such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments,” “The Progress of Religious Ideas” by Lydia Maria Child, Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and The New England Hospital for Women and Children started by Edna Dow Cheney.
“They’re thinking in tremendously forward-looking ways in all of these fields: medicine, literature, history, education, culture,” Silver explained. “I want to focus on not just what happened in that moment of the conversations, but also where it led these women and the impact it had on them.”
Silver’s fellowship granted her access to their documents, including the archive of Caroline Healey Dall, who recorded their meetings and their daily lives across decades of interactions through her journals and letters. Silver’s research was brought to life for her when she learned she was staying in the same neighborhood as these women and events.
“All of a sudden, I had this palpable sense of where they lived and how they lived because I was walking where they walked,” Silver explained. “It was a reminder to me that our work is known, that the things that we do, research, and care about are also things that God cares about deeply. He will help us achieve the work that we have to do. And I hope this will be a really important work.”
Silver’s first book, “The Book of Esther and the Typology of Female Transfiguration in America,” was published in 2018. She has written and contributed to multiple book chapters and scholarly peer-reviewed journals on women in American literature.
Silver was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to attend a summer institute on Willa Cather in 2023. This led to an honors focus course at Southern Virginia University on “My Antonia.” She also received a fellowship with the Center for Mark Twain Studies in 2022, using her research for a course on Mark Twain’s work during the Fall 2023 semester.
“The impact of researching and teaching continually flows back and forth, and I feel grateful to be able to do both because I think it benefits the students,” said Silver. “Their interaction with the material is also enriching for me. It’s a wonderfully symbiotic relationship.”