Rochester History Author Spotlight: Elizabeth Call and Milena Kahan
How did RIT prepare students for the changing worlds of retail, hospitality, and professional work, and what happened when those worlds changed? In this conversational program, a student author and her former instructor explore the research and writing behind “As the Wheel Turns: Gender, Labor, and the Divergent Fates of Retail and Hospitality Education at the Rochester Institute of Technology, 1928–1982,” recently published in the Rochester History journal. Drawing on RIT archives, photographs, course projects, and previous student research, they will discuss the rise and decline of RIT’s School of Retailing, the transformation of hospitality education, and the gendered forces that shaped both fields.
Milena Kahan is a Science, Technology and Public Policy Master's candidate at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As an undergraduate, she served as a student curator for the RIT archives, in which she conducted archival research on early women's higher education.
Elizabeth Call is Head of the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State University Libraries. She previously served as University Archivist at Rochester Institute of Technology, where she worked closely with students and faculty to integrate archival research into teaching and learning. While at RIT, she taught and mentored students in the Hands On History course, including the research that ultimately grew into the Rochester History article, “As the Wheel Turns.”
Registration is recommended but not required.
This is an in-person program that will also be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/@RochesterPublicLibraryNY/streams.
Subscribe to Rochester History: https://rochesterhistory.rit.edu/subscribe/
Presented by the Office of Rochester and Monroe County History in partnership with Rochester Institute of Technology Department of History and RIT Press.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3781705-0
