Anna Beth Lee Email and Phone Number

I am interning for the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a part of their Storytellers Workshop. I am responsible for writing profile pieces and creating longer narratives through video documentation about rich cultural stories. These pieces of work will be published online through the Center's Folklife Magazine. An integral part of the internship has revolved around the Smithsonian's annual Folklife Festival. This year's theme was "Indigenous Voices of the Americas". During this time, I interviewed and videoed festival participants, capturing their stories and expertise regarding the foodways, artistic forms, dances, songs, and sports of their respective communities, tribes, and cultures.I have had the opportunity to utilize my skills in writing, photography, and videography within the role, creating photo essays and shooting and editing short documentary pieces to accompany other pieces of writing.

I have worked as a freelance photographer for the past four years, specializing in senior, dance, musician, and family portraits alongside independent projects focused on ecofeminism, which is the intersection of environmentalism and feminism (see portfolio). I am proficient in both digital and film photography and admired for my ability to quickly connect with clients and make them feel comfortable behind the lens. I find photography to be an opportunity to connect to others and express various forms of activism.A portion of the money I receive from my work is often donated to different organizations, such as the Loveland Foundation or various disaster relief funds. During the pandemic in the spring of 2020, I raised over $1,000 taking family portraits from a safe social distance for the Knoxville, TN CAC Office on Aging, which set up a local fund seeking to help the elderly population receive resources to safely push through trialing times of COVID-19.

This summer, I was selected to participate in Drew University's Digital Humanities Summer Institute. Over the course of just one month, I attended a variety of workshops each week focused on teaching and enforcing skills in the digital humanities. We learned about digital humanities values, such as openness, collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, and experimentation (from Lisa Spiro's "This is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities"). We also learned about utilizing digital humanities tools, such as TimelineJS, Omeka, StoryMaps, Storries, and Photogrammetry to assist in our research processes and final projects. I rigorously worked on a self-led project (see below), which involved editing a short documentary film and using various DH (digital humanities) tools to explore that process from a different perspective. By the end of the institute, I presented a StoryMap intended to map out many of the locations that the documentary did not have space to include within a more fixed narrative. As a result, I learned that creating a short film in tandem with a StoryMap acts to strengthen both projects—the documentary film creates a cohesive and enticing story, uses interviews to determine and guide the storytelling piece, and allows the viewer to immerse themselves into the same educational space I experienced. On the other hand, the StoryMap provides the opportunity to contextualize the locations in the short doc, visually display these locations on a map, and take the viewer on a “tour” representative of the same educational journey that VWB and Drew students went through.One of my main takeaways from this project is that DH values and tools allow creators and collaborators to work on "living" projects- These projects can continue to grow in new directions over time, developing to reach new audiences. The StoryMap below is just the beginning and will continue to change as I finish the short doc (expected in Sept. 2024)!

During the spring of 2024, I interned at the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in downtown Madison, NJ, a museum dedicated to informing visitors about New Jersey history, culture, trades, and crafts. I worked within a variety of departments, including curatorial and marketing. Over the span of the internship, I completed larger research projects for new exhibits, such as the upcoming Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge exhibit or the redesign of the lower-level exhibits. Additionally, I created a video to provide an insider’s view of prepping the museum’s Viewable Storage Facility. I also helped to release promotional materials to various New Jersey news outlets and to line the new Viewable Storage Facility drawers with cushions for the museum’s artifacts and collections.

I was selected to work a paid internship position in the Summer in the City program under the city of Knoxville transportation department, Knoxville Area Transit (KAT), to manage their Instagram page, create infographics for social media, photograph events, and create a promotional video about the rollout of KAT’s new sustainable, all-electric busses. During the course of the internship, I learned extensively about the elaborate thought and consideration that goes into marketing for a governmental organization and met with members of the KAT executive team to learn more about budgeting and public safety. I also participated in FridayConnect, a program intended to provide personal and professional development sessions on topics such as leadership, financial literacy, mental health, effective communication, and social justice. We were pushed to learn about the importance of economics, equity, and empowerment during both these sessions and other volunteer work, and then to apply and investigate these concepts in our department assignments. FridayConnect also involved working each Friday on a final project about sustainable development in the city.