When Lara Rodriguez Sieweke began her doctoral research into how interpretations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories might be impacted by the ways the stories were presented in various magazines, she knew that viewing the actual magazines, rather than digitized versions of them, would be important. That goal inevitably led her to the University of South Carolina’s Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, which, she says, “is known to have the most comprehensive collection of Fitzgerald’s work.”
The pandemic delayed her plans by a couple of years, but when Rodriguez Sieweke traveled from northern Sweden, where she is a doctoral student at Umeå University, to Hollings Library, where the Irvin Department’s collections are housed, on October 2, she found its resources well worth the wait, particularly with respect to her work on Fitzgerald’s story “Winter Dreams,” which was published in two magazines – one American and one Canadian – at virtually the same time. A comparative analysis between the two, using an intermedial approach that pays close attention to the other media types that interact with Fitzgerald’s narrative text in the magazine, is part of her dissertation and was also the subject of her first article for The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. The different choices each magazine made about how to lay out and illustrate the story, as well as the different ads and other contextual materials surrounding it in each magazine, make “Winter Dreams” a particularly fertile subject for Rodriguez Sieweke’s research into how meaning is shaped by context.
“Making this trip to experience the materiality of these publications was very important,” Rodriguez Sieweke says. “And it has been amazing to see these 100-year-old magazines in person and immerse myself in them.”
Rodriguez Sieweke spent two weeks with the Fitzgerald collection, logging long hours in the Irvin Department’s reading room and working closely with several special collections librarians, whose passion for their work, she says, was infectious. “Michael Weisenburg and Matthew Hodge took me on a tour of the vault where rare materials are stored and were so enthusiastic that it was one of my best days of the year. Everyone here has such love and respect for their work, and you can feel that.”
After completing her doctoral studies, Rodriguez Sieweke will pursue work as a researcher and lecturer in American literature. She’s open to working in Sweden or elsewhere, but regardless of where she lands, she says she hopes her research will bring her back to Hollings: “I have felt very welcome and happy coming to this library. This has been one of the most enriching experiences I’ve had as a researcher.”