"Drowning in a Sea of Grimkes"

One Teacher's Adventures in Using the Web and the Library to Immerse Students in Primary Resources

The Challenge:

Students often enter history and literature courses with a cartoon-like image of other periods and peoples. Students often assume that most earlier problems have been resolved (for example, women's issues), that the people of earlier periods were to blame for not seeing those issues in clearer and more politically correct terms, and for assuming that those who lived in earlier periods unquestioningly acted out the conventional customs and beliefs of their day.For these reasons, students often enter literature, history, and other American studies classes prepared to regard the people under study as stick-figures, the language as outdated, the problems as irrelevent, the culture as vapid and politically incorrect, and thus the material of the course as boring.These misconceptions can best be understood as a direct result consequence of the limitations of students' direct experience with primary texts, graphics, manuscripts, and other artifacts from previous periods.

 

My Experiment-in-Progress:

I attempt to design courses that use the web and libraries to create an immersion experience that can help bring the people, the problems, and the culture of earlier periods alive for my students. By asking my students to think about literature as part of the ongoing long conversation of culture, I provide my students with a way of understanding the nature and value of the literary tradition as well. As students are working to construct their own understanding of that conversation, they develop an awareness of the connection between literature and culture as well as of their own authority to participate in that conversation.

 

My Practices:

	I encourage my students to understand American literary texts as part of the "long conversation" of history, literature, and culture that continues to shape our national identity. I also articulate a set of the core questions that are part of that conversation and provide students with frequent opportunities to explore those questions with the use of primary resources.
Image Courtesy of the American Memory Collection, Library of Congress
	I construct web pages that provide students with ready online access to recommended recommended libraries and other research collections.
Image Courtesy of the Making of America Project, Cornell
	I promote the development of an academic community within the classroom by assigning group projects and regularly using an online discussion board.
	I structure a sequence of linked assignments in order to allow students to develop and expand a base of knowledge, skills, and genuine expertise. Some examples: Learning to use a library catalogue to gain insight into a topic-- A Captivity Narrative Exercise. Learning to explore non-literary and "popular" texts as contexts for understanding "literary" and "canonical" works-- The Frederick Douglass In-Class Investigation and the use of juvenile literature, conduct literature, and graphics. Locating and selecting primary and secondary resources on the web and in libraries to construct a context for in-depth analysis of a particular work and issue-- The Oratory Project and Public Speaking in an Outspoken Age.
Image Courtesy of the Beineke Library, Yale
	I try to expand students' ways of understanding primary resources: what they are, why they matter, and how they can be found and used for academic projects.
	I work to creating bridges from one period or project to the next-- The Long Conversation on Race in America: From Frederick Douglass to the Harlem Renaissance
Image Courtesy of the American Memory Collection, Library of Congress
	I strive to bring the students into "the long conversation" and ask that they formulate their own answers to the course questions. This is the purpose behind the Closing Exercise and Final Project.
Image Courtesy of the American Memory Collection, Library of Congress

 

Outcomes:

The conclusions I formed after teaching my first web-intensive course remain the same.

However, I also have a deeper understanding of the student experience of immersion in primary resources. I have come to appreciate the challenges and joys of authentic mentoring. I have also come to how a direct experience with primary resources can transform not only a student's understanding but also his or her relationship to history, literature, and culture. To see one illustration of the student-teacher mentoring relationship and the outcomes, see the correspondence on "Drowning in a Sea of Grimkes."

 

This page was constructed by Lucia Z. Knoles, Professor of English at Assumption College, as part of a progress report on teaching with technology delivered on June 21, 2001 at the American Antiquarian Society.

For other syllabi, projects, and essays on related topics, visit her home page at http://www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles/index.html. To contact her, email lknoles@assumption.edu.