Introduction

In this exhibit, there will be a focus on some of the very interesting artifacts that were collected by a woman named Mary O’Rourke. Mary O’Rourke was an education professor at Salem State College and was interested in the global world. Aside from teaching students the world that we lived in, she wanted to take an opportunity to travel the world herself and see for herself what it is like in every part of the world that isn’t just America. She was interested in the culture and people of places around the world and wanted to learn more about them first hand. There are many questions that arise when the topic of the middle east comes up, but an interesting question where the answers may surprise people is How did Americans in the 1950s portray the middle east? This is an interesting question because most people in America has only preconceived notions that the middle east is nowhere that you should visit, and no person should be interested in learning about it firsthand. Mary on the other hand goes against these preconceived notions and shows the people who study her that she was interested in learning about the world as a whole, and did not really care for any preconceived notions due to the amount of interest she has shown in learning. When asked this question on the middle east in the 1950s, a person who study’s the travels of Mary O’Rourke would be able to say that the people of the United Sates thought that the middle east was a very interesting and beautiful place with great people and culture. The Mary O’Rourke travel files had little to no negative feedback at all about any of the places that she had visited. We can see this when we study all of her postcards that she had sent to her loved one’s back home from around the world. Mary did have some artifacts in her collection that portrayed the middle east as a violent and evil place, but in terms of her own personal opinion, we clearly see that she was very interested and excited to be traveling to a new place and learning about its aspects.