Preserving the archives in the 21st century classroom: designing history classes around primary source research.

Authors

Julie Harper Pace, The Westminster SchoolsFollow

Abstract

This article details an experiment in an 11^th and 12^th grade 3-week intensive course, the Science and History of Contagious Disease. The course was an interdisciplinary survey of how diseases are spread along with an examination of social responses. Although both lecture and discussion based, the course revolved primary around a trip in which we led approximately 22 students through archival research in the City of Savannah Municipal Archives on the Yellow Fever epidemics of 1820, 1854, and 1876. The article describes the numerous advantages of archival work, from direct contact with rare and unique primary sources to the frustration students felt struggling with nineteenth-century handwriting. The article also addresses some of the stumbling blocks experienced by students as well as the strategies and prompts used to foster student engagement with direct primary documents that led to a critical assessment of a group of sources and a new appreciation for local history.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Pace, Julie Harper (2019) "Preserving the archives in the 21st century classroom: designing history classes around primary source research.," Georgia Educational Researcher: Vol. 16: Iss. 1, Article 6.
DOI: 10.20429/ger.2019.160106
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gerjournal/vol16/iss1/6