My Spring Semester

Posted February 6, 2026 by Emmy Mahoney

Hello everyone! With the semester in full swing now, I thought I would tell you all about the classes that I am taking this spring. I am in the Library and Information Sciences and History dual degree program, so each semester I take a combination of history and library science classes. This semester, I am enrolled in three classes.

My first class is HIST 560: Gender, Sexuality, and the Carceral State. In this class, we are exploring control, punishment, and surveillance, and their corresponding systems and institutions. During each class, we engage in discussions about the assigned readings, considering them historically, as well as relating them to current events. This is not a field that I have much experience with, so I am excited to have the opportunity to delve deeper into this topic. 

My second class this semester is LIS 433: Oral History. For this class, we are learning about all of the necessary steps to conduct oral history interviews. Each week, our class has a guest speaker from the field, who provides interesting insight into the oral history process. The overall semester project is conducting an oral history interview!

The third and last class that I am enrolled in is LIS 491: Readers’ Advisory and Popular Cultural Trends. In this class, we are exploring how to keep up with the needs of adult patrons at the library. This includes learning marketing strategies, engaging in popular culture, and even reading books! For this class, we get to read nine books from nine different genres. Hopefully this will help me achieve my new year’s resolution of reading thirty books!

After three weeks of classes, I already know that this is going to be such an interesting and exciting semester!