Colloquium: Shannon McHugh

Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/13/2025
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Category(ies)

Colloquia

Shannon McHugh, from The Huntington Library, joins the Humanities Center for our weekly colloquium presentation on Thursday, November 13 at 3:00 PM in 4010 JFSB. Her presentation will highlight tips for archival research and faculty opportunities at The Huntington.

Title: In the Archives: Tips from a Huntington Library Staffer

Embarking upon archival or special collections research can be a daunting task, whether in libraries large or small, in the US or overseas. In this session, Dr. Shannon McHugh shares tips and strategies gleaned from her time working with curators and researchers at The Huntington Library in California, as well as her own years of research, which have taken her everywhere from the Vatican Library to the Disney Archives. Discussion will also include opportunities for BYU faculty and students at The Huntington, including collection strengths, the library’s recently revitalized journal of early modern studies, HLQ, and research fellowships.

About our guest:

Shannon McHugh, the assistant director of research, came to The Huntington from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she was associate professor of French and Italian.

A specialist in Italian and French Renaissance literature and gender, McHugh is the author of Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy (Amsterdam University Press, 2023). As the 2023–24 Molina Fellow in the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences at The Huntington, she conducted research on her project “Women’s Reproductive Lives in Renaissance Lyric Poetry.” McHugh is also working on a book about Walt Disney’s library, a project stemming from a Huntington U course that she taught in conjunction with the 2022–23 exhibition “Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts.”

McHugh helps connect the research of Huntington fellows with broader audiences while making connections between The Huntington’s historical collections and the present.