One of the central goals of this class is to get you working as historians, developing skills of historical thinking, research, and analysis by creating your own projects. Influenced by the ideas of Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire about engaging students as active content creators in their own learning, this project give you the chance you come up with a (class-related) research project that is meaningful to you.
Working over the course of the semester, you will design a research project to investigate any aspect of the history of U.S./Latin American relations or Latinx communities in the U.S. that analyzes a range of primary sources as well as addressing how this topic has been studied by other scholars. Your project might focus on Bolivian responses to environmental contamination by U.S. mining companies; the experiences of young men at MLB camps in the Dominican Republic; gender and Chicano activism in the Civil Rights Movement; or U.S. assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. We’ll work together to find something that is both meaningful to you and makes a positive contribution to digital public history.
Your annotated bibliography will serve as the basis for the research project.
You’ll communicate your historical analysis in a variety of formats, including a digital encyclopedia entry, a curated primary source reader, and an oral presentation.
Approaching the Project:
We will break this project into multiple steps with chances for revision and refinement during the course of the semester. Much of the initial research and pre-writing will be shared on our course site.