The Department of History and Geography
Rod Clare Associate Professor | Clyde Ellis Professor |
Mary Jo Festle Professor | Charles Irons Associate Professor |
Nancy Midgette Professor |
Overview
As a component of the Department of History and Geography's major curricular revision, we proposed a Diversity Infusion Project to develop pedagogies designed to ensure that the 300 or so students who annually take our U.S. History surveys gain an understanding of American history from the perspective of a diverse range of Americans. (1)
As we (and the field) move away from breadth of coverage as the organizing principle for survey courses, we aimed to deepen our students' understanding that Americans experienced historical events and periods differently based in part on their race, socioeconomic class, sex, religion, region, nationality, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. (2)
During Phase One of the project (summer), we researched innovative pedagogies and current practices, shared content specialization with one another, and created a plan for incorporating greater diversity into our surveys. We agreed we might do this in different ways from one another, possibly through recurring themes, modules, intentional inclusion of multiple perspectives in primary sources, and/or new assignments or research projects. We also discussed how we might assess our project.
During Phase Two (fall and spring), we taught some of our survey courses containing these new modules, materials, assignments and perspectives and met to gauge how things were going. Some of us taught in both fall and spring and could make further adjustments. During spring semester again assessed our own and our students' work related to diversity and decided how to disseminate what we have learned. We hope to share resources with current and future adjuncts and new faculty.
(1) Survey courses currently include HST 120 (US and North Carolina through Reconstruction), HST 121 (US to 1865), HST 122 (US from 1865), and HST 123 (US and NC from 1865).
(2) For an introduction to historians' reevaluation of the survey courses, please see Lendol Calder, "Uncoverage': Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey," Journal of American History (March 2006):available online at http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/textbooks/2006/calder.html.
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