Teaching Undergraduates with Archives


Book Description

Teaching Undergraduates with Archives mirrors the evolving practice and academic research on primary sources in the classroom. The result of a national symposium at the University of Michigan in 2018, the volume features case studies, reflections, and forecasts concerning critical thinking, active learning, and archival evidence. The chapters describe collaborations between faculty, archivists, librarians, and students. Ideas behind new assignments and syllabi provide an immediate utility for those who teach with primary sources. Testimonies to the challenges and benefits of robust programs speak to the emerging prioritization of teaching and learning across disciplines with archives and special collections. "The contributions to this volume capture exceptionally well the passion and the creativity that archivists and special collections librarians who teach and do outreach with primary sources are bringing to their work in this increasingly important activity domain." -- Martha O'Hara Conway, Director, Special Collections Research Center, University of Michigan Library "As teaching with archival materials has moved to the foreground of the archival mission for many institutions, this timely, inspiring, and practical volume, which comes out of the multi-day symposium solely devoted to teaching undergraduates with archival materials, is a required reading for anyone who teaches with archival materials, or who would like to. It really captures the spirit and enthusiasm that these authors brought to that symposium." -- Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach, Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries "Reflecting the increasing priority of teaching in archives and special collections libraries, this book captures a variety of perspectives, insights, approaches, and prognostications that will enlighten, challenge, and inspire a growing community of practitioners." -- Bill Landis, Head of Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library "Building on the momentum generated at the symposium, this book is a treasure trove for professionals in the field who are eager for innovative ideas regarding collaboration and experimentation in teaching with archival material." -- Elizabeth Williams-Clymer, Special Collections Librarian, Kenyon College




Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research


Book Description

Despite the plethora of primary sources that libraries have made available to their communities, the published literature thus far is largely limited to the pedagogical significance of special collections and archives. To leverage the wealth of primary sources and to explore the full potential of primary sources in the undergraduate classroom, it is imperative that the conversation include faculty members as well as librarians outside special collections and archives. The ten case studies included in Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research represent the exciting work of faculty members and their librarian partners from various areas of library operations. They offer examples, strategies, and innovative ways to incorporate a wide range of primary materials into undergraduates’ diet of secondary source research, including both local archival and non-archival materials, as well as digital and physical materials and non-English language materials. Co-authored by faculty and their librarian partners, these case studies focus on how students develop and practice skills related to finding and identifying primary information, analyzing and interrogating it, confronting interpretations, and constructing and presenting arguments using primary sources. The emphasis on transferrable skills, as well as the diversity of primary sources and teaching areas they represent, makes it easy for anyone interested to find examples from which they can draw guidance and inspiration to form partnerships and to (re)invigorate students’ learning experiences involving primary sources. Furthermore, the collaborative process and the methods to engage students in primary source research that are highlighted in these stories are not unique to primary sources. They can be easily applied in other collaborative teaching efforts involving different types of information, to create skilled student researchers, adept information producers, and informed citizens.




Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives


Book Description

The availability of digital editions of early modern works brings a wealth of exciting archival and primary source materials into the classroom. But electronic archives can be overwhelming and hard to use, for teachers and students alike, and digitization can distort or omit information about texts. Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives places traditional and electronic archives in conversation, outlines practical methods for incorporating them into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and addresses the theoretical issues involved in studying them. The volume discusses a range of physical and virtual archives from 1473 to 1700 that are useful in the teaching of early modern literature--both major sources and rich collections that are less known (including affordable or free options for those with limited institutional resources). Although the volume focuses on English literature and culture, essays discuss a wide range of comparative approaches involving Latin, French, Spanish, German, and early American texts and explain how to incorporate visual materials, ballads, domestic treatises, atlases, music, and historical documents into the teaching of literature.




Past Or Portal?


Book Description

In the age of ubiquitous access to information, library special collections and archives have received renewed attention through digitization projects designed to share collections with the world at large. Yet these materials also offer opportunities for student learning through direct engagement with rare or unique items. While special collections and archives have largely been used by advanced researchers and scholars, an increasing number of undergraduate courses are taking advantage of these materials as guides in the instructional process.




The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching


Book Description

Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.




Teaching with Primary Sources


Book Description




Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity in Contemporary Higher Education


Book Description

One of the most important issues academic organizations face is how the administration and faculty handle cultural and varied differences in higher education. High racial tensions as well as the ever-increasing need for equality suggest that changes at the highest level are essential to move forward. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity in Contemporary Higher Education is an essential reference source that discusses the need for academic organizations to establish policy that is current, alive, and fluid by design, thereby supporting an ongoing examination of best practices with an overt commitment to continued improvement, as well as an influence for future leaders who will emerge from the ranks. Featuring research on topics such as campus climate, university administration, and academic policy, this book is ideally designed for educators, department chairs, guidance professionals, career counselors, administrators, and policymakers who are seeking coverage on designing curricula that impact college and university admissions readiness and success.




Thin Description


Book Description

The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are often dismissed as a fringe cult for their beliefs that African Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites and that veganism leads to immortality. But John L. Jackson questions what “fringe” means in a world where cultural practices of every stripe circulate freely on the Internet. In this poignant and sophisticated examination of the limits of ethnography, the reader is invited into the visionary, sometimes vexing world of the AHIJ. Jackson challenges what Clifford Geertz called the “thick description” of anthropological research through a multidisciplinary investigation of how the AHIJ use media and technology to define their public image in the twenty-first century. Moving far beyond the “modest witness” of nineteenth-century scientific discourse or the “thick descriptions” of twentieth-century anthropology, Jackson insists that Geertzian thickness is an impossibility, especially in a world where the anthropologist’s subject is a self-aware subject—one who crafts his own autoethnography while critically consuming the ethnographer’s offerings. Thin Description takes as its topic a group situated along the fault lines of several diasporas—African, American, Jewish—and provides an anthropological account of how race, religion, and ethnographic representation must be understood anew in the twenty-first century lest we reenact old mistakes in the study of black humanity.




No Archive Will Restore You


Book Description

A thief, desire -- No archive will restore you -- the body archive -- The inarticulate trace -- Other women -- The ghost archive.




Scholarship in the Sandbox


Book Description

"Scholarship in the Sandbox" is broken into four sections--Library as Laboratory, Library as Forum, Library as Archive, and Articulating the Value of Student Work--containing case studies that address the innovative ways libraries are actively occupying more central space on campus as practical laboratories outside of the classroom. They demonstrate collective learning in a sandbox environment where the answers are far less important than the multiplicity of prospective solutions, and present several models for providing a supportive environment in which students, teaching faculty, and librarians can practice, explore, fail at, and refine their academic work through collaboration.--