HIST 307 - DIY American History

This course will enable students to reexamine, reframe, and rewrite the standard history lessons they have learned since grade school. It will ask them to rethink the conventional narratives of American history that have privileged some groups and stories over others, while also asking them to rethink the ways (that is, the teaching methods) in which they learned that history. Students will read scholarly articles and books that help diversify their knowledge of what constitutes American history, engage in primary research to create new histories, and produce a lesson plan on a particular topic that could be taught to a grade level or community group of their choice. This is one part of a pair with EDUC 406, Learning and Learners, which examines the foundational concepts of how humans learn. The aim is to help students understand how to become authors of American history, not simply consumers of it.

3 credits