Isabella Stewart Gardner gave the wide world, through art and beauty, to Boston. The Hope students who worked as research assistants with Dr. Natalie Dykstra of the English faculty found a world of possibility illuminated as they helped her develop her new biography of Gardner.
Gardner spent decades collecting masterworks of art, and then designed, built and endowed a museum, which opened in 1903 and bears her name, to display her collection for the public to enjoy in perpetuity. Dykstra spent a decade of research and writing to understand the enigmatic philanthropist, traveling from Hope’s hometown of Holland to Boston and Europe, and across Gardner’s life from her childhood in New York City through her adulthood in Boston, then considered the Athens of America.
Melanie Burkhardt ’18, Katrin Kelley ’18, Sarah Lundy ’19, Aine O’Connor ’20 and Hannah Jones ’21 were right there with her, with their experiences as Hope-undergraduate researchers ranging from going online to look up historic weather data, to deciphering the cursive handwriting of the mid-19th century in diaries at the Massachusetts Historical Society, to visiting the same landmarks and byways in Paris, France, and Venice, Italy, that had once transfixed and transformed a young Isabella.
With the resulting book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, published last spring to critical acclaim (the New York Times has described it as “exquisitely detailed and perceptive”), Dykstra, who retired in 2020 and now lives outside Boston, was invited to return to campus in September as the opening keynote speaker for the college’s two-day Community Summit on Arts and Humanities. Her lecture gave an overview of Gardner’s long and eventful life and of her own research experiences, but also emphasized the crucial role played by the students, whose transcription, translation, fact-gathering and perspective, she said, were nothing less than essential.
For more about Isabella Stewart Gardner and Dr. Natalie Dykstra’s 10-year quest to develop the critically acclaimed biography Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, please visit the feature story in the Spera faculty-research section in the Winter 2024 issue of News from Hope College.
“You don’t write books alone — not even close,” Dykstra said. “And I was just so fortunate to have this company.”
“I would test out some of my ideas with them,” she said. “It was really helpful to me to ask, ‘Hey, what do you think? Is this interesting? Would you want to know more about this?’”
Burkhardt, Lundy, O’Connor and Jones, all of whom spent two or more years conducting research with Dykstra, shared their insights about the experience during a “Behind the Pages” panel discussion the next day. Although the panel didn’t include Kelley, Dykstra noted that she provided vital research assistance at the very beginning of the project that included traveling to Venice.
“We were really enthusiastic about the book and excited to get to be a part of the process,” said O’Connor, an English and history major at Hope who went on to earn a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now the health sciences librarian at Belmont University. “I think it can be hard as a writer. You can feel like you’re isolated and on your own. And I think we all were just really enthusiastic and thrilled to get the chance to do it.”
It’s also not hyperbole to say that they each found working on the project life-changing.
“Working with Professor Dykstra [conducting research for her book Chasing Beauty] also led to working with other professors on campus and other terrific, ongoing opportunities that are just amazing. It’s kind of wild to think about: If that hadn’t happened, I could be very different.”
— Hannah Jones ’21
“Some of the most significant work of my life. Working with Professor Dykstra also led to working with other professors on campus and other terrific, ongoing opportunities that are just amazing,” said Jones, who after graduating from Hope with a major in English and women’s and gender studies also earned her master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is now an information literacy librarian at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. “It’s kind of wild to think about: If that hadn’t happened, I could be very different.”
Those sorts of outcomes are the raison d’être of Hope’s historic — and nationally recognized — emphasis on providing active-learning opportunities tor students via participation in collaborative research with faculty mentors, with “collaborative” being an essential part of the mix.
“There’s a certain magic that happens when faculty and students come together to create something together,” said Dr. Steve Maiullo, dean of arts and humanities. “Something greater happens. The whole ends up being greater than the sum of the parts.”
The students, as was the case with Chasing Beauty, make real and significant contributions to the research, but in addition they learn the how of scholarship and of finding answers that no one else has found.
“I think the four of us probably would describe ourselves as naturally curious people, and so there’s that curiosity and the desire to know more, viewing it as kind of a puzzle where you’re putting the pieces together,” Jones said. “And then it is iterative, and it takes time. And I think in the research process, failure is inevitable and good. It’s really cheesy, but it’s always an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Or just to change course and pursue a new direction that you didn’t initially look into.”
Along the way, they also have a chance to discover more about possible career paths and to make professional connections.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I got here and I knew I always loved English; it was my favorite class and best class,” said Burkhardt, who majored in English and minored in communication. “I wanted to take classes with great professors, which certainly are still here. And so that’s what I did. And I declared that major and still said, ‘I don’t really know what’s going to happen with this, but I know I enjoy it. I know there’s something there, so I’m just going to keep going.’”
She traveled to Boston to conduct archival research with Dykstra. Among the highlights, she recalled: working with original documents from historic and literary luminaries instead of only reading about them.
“I had transcribed something from Henry James and T.S. Elliot. Studying English, you’re often reading what somebody else has already discovered and then trying to translate that to the point you’re making. And this was going right to the source for the first time and starting to find those facts. And that was such a special experience and was new to me. And it was cool to read these personal letters between these friends of people that I was studying at the time and in school.”
— Melanie Burkhardt ’18
“I had transcribed something from Henry James and T.S. Elliot,” Burkhardt said. “Studying English, you’re often reading what somebody else has already discovered and then trying to translate that to the point you’re making. And this was going right to the source for the first time and starting to find those facts. And that was such a special experience and was new to me. And it was cool to read these personal letters between these friends of people that I was studying at the time and in school.”
Because Burkhardt was interested in publishing, Dykstra connected her with her publisher, part of a progression of events and opportunities that Burkhardt has continued to enjoy.
“And so, I just kind of kept following these little nudges and ended up with an internship, and then a job, and from that job to a marketing job in a publishing house,” Burkhardt said. “And now I’m in a marketing job for Meijer, which I never, ever thought I would be, but it’s really fun.”
And not least of all, she noted, “I learned so many skills throughout the research process and my time at Hope that I still use in my job today.”
“If you love the arts and you love what you’re doing, keep going and follow those nudges: ‘I like this; I don’t like this.’ Burkhardt said. “And that’s the journey of an arts major sometimes, I think.”
Lundy, O’Connor and Jones each accompanied Dykstra to Paris for portions of their research experience.
Lundy majored in history and French at Hope, and then earned her master’s in information from the University of Michigan, specializing in digital archives. She’s now back at Hope as the Mary Riepma Ross Director of Archives and Special Collections.
“I also didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I loved history and French, and came to college thinking, ‘I’ll try that, I’ll declare that,” and for a while I thought I wanted to work in museums, and especially a public museum, government museum setting. And I remember having several professors say, ‘You really like research. Are you sure you want to [work at a museum]?’ — which looking back is kind of funny now.”
“I did a whole range of things [working with Dykstra on Chasing Beauty] that I hadn’t ever thought about as archival research,” Lundy said. “One was looking for day-to-day life for Isabella. What was the weather like? Where did her family live in New York? What school did they go to? What classes did she take when she was in Paris? And also, just getting to see her as a real human being… and dig into some correspondence and see that. To this day, that’s one of my favorite types of archival record: the letters, the postcards, the stories that people write down.”
“And I got to senior year and realized, ‘Maybe this is where I should be. Maybe I was wrong,’” Lundy said.
“It’s great to have family, to have friends, to have mentors that know you better than you may know yourself,” she said. “So, if you find those people, have those people, please don’t hesitate to ask them questions.”
Hundreds of Hope students participate in collaborative research each year, with the experience of Dykstra’s team reflecting that there are many paths to becoming involved. Burkhardt, for example, was already working with Dykstra as a teaching assistant, and based on her outstanding work Dykstra asked her to join her in her research. Lundy had conducted research with the history department, the high quality of her work earning a recommendation from the department and unexpected offer from Dykstra when she was seeking a student who could help translate Gardner’s correspondence from France. Jones and O’Connor combined excellence with initiative.
“I was sitting in Lubbers Hall [where the English department is housed] one day, as students tend to do, and I had my feet up and I was, you know, maybe not looking super professional. And Professor Dykstra walked in and I quickly put myself together, and we chatted for a minute,” O’Connor recalled. “And at the very end, I said, ‘You know, Professor Dykstra, if you ever needed a TA, I would love to TA for you.’ And she said, ‘Sure.’ So, I ended up TA-ing for her.
“And then in the middle of that class where I was TA-ing, Hannah [who was also one of Dykstra’s teaching assistants] and I were angling to go to Boston. We really wanted to do that,” O’Connor said. “And so, I walked up to Professor Dykstra again at the end of class and I said, ‘You know, Professor Dykstra, if you ever need a research assistant. I would love to do that with you.’ And she said, ‘Well, maybe not Boston, but how about Paris?’”