Revolutionary Change and Historical Commemoration in Germantown and Philadelphia

Catalog description

This first-year seminar explores questions about revolutionary change and historical commemoration in Philadelphia, with a focus on the neighborhood of Germantown. What constitutes a revolution? What do we mean when we call something “revolutionary”? In cooperation with the twenty historic sites that constitute Historic Germantown, this seminar exploring various facets of the American Revolution as they played out in Philadelphia, including the Battle of Germantown (1777) as well as Quaker and Peace Church peace testimonies, and how they have been remembered–by historians, by museums, and in popular culture. We will also consider older proposals for change which might be called “revolutionary”–including the abolition of chattel slavery, proposed in Germantown in 1688–and the “unfinished promises” of freedom for all, enduring into the nineteenth century and even today. With visits to local exhibits commemorating revolution in Germantown and in Philadelphia, we will examine how the city’s museums are asking and answering questions about how to document, commemorate, and remember. And, we will create our own installation for a public exhibit in the welcome center of Historic Germantown illuminating the work of neighborhood’s memory keepers today.