Students Rescue Lost Stories with Archival Research

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a 2,000-to-3,000-word piece of narrative non-fiction about a key event in a historic figure’s life or a significant event or moment in history. The trick? This must be based on primary sources from a library’s archive. You’ll use personal letters, handwritten diaries, government documents, contemporaneous media reports, and anything else you can find in an archival repository.

Fourteen BU students accepted this challenge, posed by journalism lecturer Erick Trickey, by enrolling in College of Communication class JO 543: Rescuing Lost Stories: Writing Nonfiction Narratives from the Archives. Trickey, who has written about U.S. history for Smithsonian Magazine and The Washington Post and is enterprise editor of the New Bedford Light, has been teaching this class since it debuted in the summer of 2020. Six years later, students have still barely scratched the surface of the stories that can be found in the rich collections of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at BU Libraries.

Oriana Fallaci sitting next to soldiers in Saigon, Vietnam in 1967. Photo from the Oriana Fallaci Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

During the Spring 2026 semester, students explored myriad collections at the Gotlieb Center, ranging in subject, time, and geographical location. Elaina Fuzi (COM’26) delved into the collection of prominent political journalist Oriana Fallaci, who was one of the few women reporting from the front lines of the Vietnam War. After visiting the Gotlieb Center, Fuzi was able to use interviews done by Fallaci with soldiers on the front lines to add emotional, firsthand accounts of the horrors of war into her narrative:

“There’s nothing glorious, nothing exciting; it’s just a filthy tragedy you can only cry over,” American Captain Scher (no first name is mentioned) said about war. “You cry for the man you bawled out and who is blown to pieces in front of you. You cry for the man who killed your friends.” (Fuzi)

Other archival finds by Trickey’s students include FBI documents signed by David Greenglass, who testified against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in their 1951 trial for espionage.

Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, had been arrested for espionage himself and was instrumental to the Rosenberg’s prosecution. The signed FBI statement, as well as the FBI report that alleges to have found communication between Greenglass and his wife related to communist activity, are housed in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg collection at the Gotlieb Center. George Atencio (COM’26) was able to use these documents, as well as correspondence between Greenglass and his wife, to argue that without Greenglass, Ethel may not have been executed along with her husband.

Joan Nygbah (COM’27) dove into the recently processed archives of influential poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni, who was a central figure in the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni’s papers illuminated the tensions she faced in relation to her work being taught in high schools. In 1994, roughly 80 copies of an anthology that included Giovanni’s Woman Poem were pulled from classrooms in Hempfield, Pennsylvania due to parental pushback. Correspondence between Giovanni and a local teacher show that the school board acted rashly by pulling the books without deliberation and that they “[seem] to doubt [Giovanni’s] credibility as an author.” But not all the correspondence were negative. After speaking in another classroom three years later, Giovanni received thank you letters from students, with one writing “You are cool because your poetry relates to us.” The stories in Giovanni’s personal papers exposed the duality of how her writing was perceived: where adults may have feared her perceived radical ideas, students saw themselves in her poetry.

Archives provide journalists critical connections and insight. Journalists rely on primary sources to develop a clearer and more nuanced picture of someone’s life and understand how historic events were perceived in the moment, enabling us to see multiple sides of history from those who lived it. With their hands-on archival experience, these students developed research and reporting skills, and new perspectives that will help them excel in future endeavors.

Once finished, students can share their research on OpenBU, Boston University’s Open Access digital repository. While not a requirement, most students this year chose to publish their scholarship on the website. Read their stories:

View all posts