IIIF for Educators

Gemini Lab Activity 2

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Gemini Lab Activity 2

💡 Concept

💡 Concept

A page from Bonnie Cashin's personal scrapbook Archives are not neutral repositories of truth; they are constructed, both by the institutions that hold them and the individuals who leave them behind. When we study the Bonnie Cashin collection, we are met with a fascinating tension between hyper-visibility and deliberate silence.

Cashin was born to an Armenian immigrant mother (Eunice, born Ovsanna). However, coming of age and building a career in an era steeped in American xenophobia and pressure to assimilate, Cashin almost entirely obscured her ethnic heritage. The "Bonnie Cashin" brand was marketed as quintessentially, effortlessly "All-American." To achieve professional success and avoid marginalization, she carefully curated her public persona, leaving intentional gaps in her personal history.

When historians look at archives, they must learn to "read the silences"—to ask not only what is preserved, but what has been left out, altered, or anglicized, and why.

 

🖥️  Activity

In this lab, we will examine biographical materials, press clippings, and personal scrapbooks from the collection. Your task is to look for the "Americanness" she projected. How does she frame her identity in the press? What stories does she tell about her origins, and what stories are missing?

 

👓  Examples

Use the embedded Mirador viewer below to browse the biographical documents and press clippings. Look for specific language or imagery that constructs her public persona.

 

🧱 Materials

You can view items on the Library Digital Collections site by clicking these links. The IIIF manifest URLs are below each item.

https://iiif.library.ucla.edu/ark%3A%2F21198%2Fzz002h2f77/manifest
https://iiif.library.ucla.edu/ark%3A%2F21198%2Fzz002h2f88/manifest

 

🛠️ Tools

 

🪜 Steps

Cropping a IIIF image
  1. Copy the manifest URL of the item you would like to crop from the Materials section above and paste it into the Cropping Tool.
  2. Click the thumbnail in the left column to load in the IIIF Cropping Tool viewer.
  3. Zoom and view.
  4. To crop a detail from the image, click the white pencil icon, and highlight the desired rectangle by clicking and dragging a rectangle from corner to corner.
  5. A thumbnail of your selected detail will appear in a slider at the bottom of the Cropping Tool. You can repeat to collect multiple details.
  6. Click the Copy icon Copy icon on the left side of the thumbnail.
Posting with an image
  1. Click Reply.
  2. To enter your image details, simply paste into the text field.
  3. Repeat for additional images.

 

✉️ Share

Post your cropped detail and write a brief reflection (100-150 words). Address the following: How does this specific document construct her identity? Based on what we know about her Armenian heritage, how does this document represent an "archival silence" or a deliberate professional survival strategy?

Post by (DUE DATE)

 

🤝 Collaborate

You are encouraged to view, read, and respond to posts by your peers. Respond to a classmate: How does their chosen document add to your understanding of how marginalized figures navigated the mid-20th-century American workplace?

Interact by (DUE DATE)

 

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