I grew up spending my summer days at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Running down its towering dunes, swimming in Lake Michigan, and hiking through its marshes created an attachment to the place and a desire to protect it. This desire led me to the University of Michigan, where I began my time here in environmental studies, hoping to foster a relationship between nature and the individual that inspires stewardship. As I continued my studies, I became much more interested in a historical lens on this relationship, and changed my major to history. I am deeply interested in the ways people interact with nature, with each other, and how that produces action.
This project, in some ways, is centered around these relationships. Victor Perera was a Sephardic author whose work explored culture, family, and place. Perera was born in Guatemala in 1934. He studied at Brooklyn college and received an MFA from the University of Michigan, where he won the Hopwood Award. He then taught in California, where he continued to write and publish many of his most famous works.
In 1996, Perera traveled to Patagonia, Argentina, to write a book about whales, which interested him throughout his life. In 1998, Perera suffered a stroke that limited his ability to write, and the book was left unpublished. After his death in 2003, his papers were donated to the University of Michigan Library Special Collections Research Center, where his unpublished manuscript, Of Whales and Men, remains.
This project intended to explore the life and work of Victor Perera, and particularly his manuscript, Of Whales and Men: Patagonian Encounters. My fellow interns and I began by reading the manuscript, which focuses on the people in Península Valdés, their relationship to the whales and other inhabitants, and the impacts of the “ecotourism” industry. After reading the manuscript, we shifted our focus to the publication process. We engaged with professionals from Michigan Publishing to understand their work and the steps required to publish a book. While we were not able to publish the manuscript at this point due to copyright issues that arose, meeting with Michigan Publishing provided an amazing opportunity to ask questions and learn about another career path within academia.
At the same time, my fellow interns and I began sifting through the Victor Perera collection, housed in the Special Collections Research Center. We sought to build a picture of both Perera's trip to Patagonia and his life. Among the collection materials I explored, were his research files about whales, pictures from his time there, correspondence leading up to and after the trip, drafts of the manuscript, and exchanges with prospective publishers.
Personally, the archival research process was my favorite part of the project. I had the opportunity to speak with the archivist who processed the collection and learn about how it was organized, which provided a new angle to my own studies in history. My time at the archives also prepared me well as I plan to embark on my own archival research trip at the beginning of August for my senior honors thesis. I will surely use the skills I gained this summer and be able to use my time there much more efficiently!
Thinking long term, this internship has provided me with many valuable skills for my future career. I learned how to work on multiple tasks, like editing the manuscript and doing archival research, and how to best organize my time. It also allowed me to explore careers in academic librarianship, something I have been interested in since the beginning of my history coursework.
This summer has certainly informed my future plans. While I greatly enjoyed this internship, I believe a career in academia may be a bit too solitary for me. While the program allowed me to collaborate with many different individuals, I think I prefer a career that engages with people more.
Nevertheless, I will carry the lessons I learned with me as I move into my senior year and beyond. Victor Perera taught me much about how humans interact with the natural world: studying it, taking from it, connecting with it, and fearing it. These are lessons I learned running down the sand dunes, but did not have the words for until now.