This course is an introduction to the ways historians study the past. Students will learn how historians formulate research questions, how to use historical evidence, and how to tell historical stories. Each semester, this course will examine a different historical theme or question. A description of the specific topic offered will be posted prior to the registration period. Students may take multiple versions of this course. Spring 2019: War Letters. In this course we will study the discipline of history by “doing” history. Our focus will be on letters from World War II from soldiers and nurses who served in the Pacific, drawn from the war letter archive in the UNE library. As we explore this rich archive of primary source documents we will focus on three areas of study: letters as a historical source; the content & context of war letters; and the historical stories we can tell based on war letters. This semester we have a unique opportunity. We will tell our historical stories by creating a professional museum exhibit to be installed in the Ketchum Library Gallery. Students will plan every facet of the exhibit: researching the letters, creating exhibit themes, designing the visual appearance, selecting artifacts, writing text and label copy, and, at the end of the semester, installing the exhibit and opening it to the public. Particularly for students interested in education, writing, and public history, this course will provide practical skills and a tangible product to highlight to future employers.
This course involved a whole semester of work cumulated into one museum exhibit. We took real war letters from World War Two in the Pacific and used them to create a museum exhibit on certain topics, mine on the atomic bomb. I did other research online using scholarly sources, I compared information, and finally we got to print panels and hang them and make our own museum exhibit.
