This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Emily Brooks is a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellow at the New York Public Library. Her book Gotham’s War Within a War: Anti-Vice Policing, Militarism, and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in New York City, 1934-1945, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. She received her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2019 and previously held a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship. She has written about policing, gender, race, and city politics in the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Urban History, and the Washington Post, among other places.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

I was reading a lot of histories about policing women in the early twentieth century and noticed that they all ended in the early 1930s or before. I started wondering where the story went next and began looking into policing in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. I noticed that discussions about crime and policing changed significantly during the mobilization for World War II, so my project became about the policing regime that developed in post-Tammany New York City and how it changed during the war. Once I began looking for it I saw that debates about policing and crime were central to the reform governance proposed by Fiorello LaGuardia when he became mayor. As I dug more into the time period and the primary sources, I found that themes that interested me and that felt deeply relevant today, including questions of police reform, militarism, and racial and gendered criminalization and violence were all key issues for New Yorkers in these years. 

What research tools could you not live without? 

My phone, my Tiny Scanner application, and my Dropbox account. Organization does not come easily to me, and I used to struggle with keeping photos of archival research in accessible places. A friend and mentor recommended Tiny Scanner to me a few years ago, and it has improved my process immensely. You can create multi-page pdfs and then save them wherever you save your material (I use Dropbox). I title my documents with the folder number, box number, and archival collection. That way, I always have the information that I need for citations. 

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

Recently I found a photo of a young woman with her sailor boyfriend in Times Square in 1942 in a file created about her by a social worker after she was arrested for prostitution. This was unexpected because these files do not usually include photos. This photo was also special because it was clearly labeled with the year and location and because the young woman looked so joyful in it. She was grinning and wearing lipstick with a stylish hairdo; her excitement to be in Times Square radiated out of the image. In the past, I have also found a detailed description of young women breaking out of a juvenile detention center in Brooklyn in 1944 using a nail file, sheets, and lots of gumption. Because I write about policing and criminalization I encounter many stories of violence and abuse. But, even the records of surveillance and criminalization that I work in are suffused with resistance, joy, and humor. 

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

I have been reading Judith Richardson’s Possessions: The History and Uses of Hauntings in the Hudson Valley for fun, and I’ve been learning a lot. I was interested to learn that Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow may have been influenced by stories of hauntings connected to the death of enslaved woman Anna Dorothea Swarts in 1755. Her owner, a wealthy landowner, likely killed her, but was not convicted. Stories of her haunting the land where she died were passed down through time and morphed to reflect changes in the local culture. These hauntings were partly a reflection of the community’s efforts to process the violence against Swarts and the fact that her killer was never punished. I highly recommend the book as compelling cultural and social history as well as a great ghostly read. 

How do you maintain your research momentum?

Sometimes it can be challenging. When I am feeling burnt out on whatever particular part of the research process I am in, I try to switch to another area of work. So, if I have been in the archives a lot and am feeling exhausted, I try to take time reviewing the documents that I have photographed, or reading some new historiography that I had set aside. I often have multiple writing or teaching projects underway at the same time, so I will also switch between them if I want to think about something new. Also, taking breaks is essential for maintaining momentum, so playing with my family and watching tv are very important! 

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

I take my toddler to the playground, where we slide relentlessly until she demands to go home. After she goes to bed, I watch scripted television shows with a supernatural element. They must be the right combination of spooky and trashy. Currently, I’m watching Evil, and it is fantastic. 

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?

Start with the footnotes of your favorite book and go from there. If you are doing archival research, don’t be discouraged if you have unproductive research trips. I have found that in the early stage of a project it can take a bit of time to develop an understanding of the scope of your research question or interests. When you are in this early stage you have to let your instincts guide you toward what feels the most relevant and resist the urge to read or photograph everything. As you sift through the sources, your familiarity with your characters and topic will grow and you will circle in on what feels most important. And you may have to return to archives after you thought you were finished, which I have to do right now and feels like a pain, but is just part of the process.