Annie Herman ’14 has been working diligently on a new project called Memphis Through the Hispanic Eyes: ConeXiones. This project will work with Professor Pettinaroli’s Spanish 306 class to establish connections between Rhodes students and Hispanic high school students in the Memphis community. The Spanish 306 class she is working with will meet with Latino students from Memphis and pair off in order to select a topic which they would like to learn more about. Furthermore, because 306 is a literature course, they will then be assigned a book concerning this topic and read it together. Finally, they will both be given a camera and instructed to venture out into Memphis to capture images conveying the essence of their study. When this has all been done, the students’ work will be compiled into a magazine and Herman will organize an exhibition of the photography.
The high school students who will be participating are involved in the Latino Memphis initiative called Abriendo Puertas, or opening doors- a program which prepares Latino high school students for college. Thus, this project will be an excellent opportunity for them to interact with college students and learn more about a topic which they might not have been introduced to otherwise.
Herman was able to make her ideas into a reality through her CODA fellowship. She reflects that CODA “was so supportive of my idea” and has “consistently served as an incredible means of exposure into the Memphis community.” She has done a project like this before with CODA, called Memphis Through the Lens, which gave cameras to students in Memphis city schools and encouraged them to document their lives. The photos were then compiled into an exhibition in the gallery at the Red Birds Stadium. Memphis community members, Rhodes faculty, and Rhodes students were all invited to the event, creating an excellent way further integrate Rhodes into the Memphis community. Furthermore, it gave the students involved an opportunity to be recognized in a way that they might not have typically been. They were also able to go see a Red Birds game afterwards- something that a lot of them had never done before. Herman reflects that “the arts are really important because it is a great way to reach out to people and engage them.”
Following her graduation from Rhodes, Herman hopes to pursue a career in Human Resources, and she is confident that the work she has done through CODA will help her dive in head first as she enters the work force. She asserts that the “event planning and communications skills that I have learned through CODA will be especially useful.” This project is also an excellent opportunity for Herman to continue practicing her Spanish fluency. Though she has already completed the requirements to fulfill her Spanish minor, Herman believes that knowing another language will be a vital skill in her career and looks forwards to utilizing it through this project.
Above all, Herman hopes that this project will push the Rhodes students involved outside of their comfort zone and break the bubble that we so often find ourselves living in at Rhodes. She hopes that “Memphis Through the Eyes will serve as an excellent means of pushing them out into the community and introducing them to a new perspective they might not have encountered otherwise.” Herman also argues that, because many students in the 306 class are minors or majors, “it’s really important [for them] to practice with natives” and seeing as “not all students have a chance to study abroad, being able to speak with a native in the community will be very helpful to them.”