Doing History: Research, Writing, and Mentorship

Catalog description

Focused on mentorship, both on campus and off, this course allows Penn Students to design and develop a research project while engaging with high schoolers from the School District of Philadelphia who will be pursuing their own historical work. Their teacher, Joshua Block, is a Penn graduate with twenty-five years of experience in the Philadelphia School District--his support will allow seminar participants to learn about teaching as a profession. During the first half of the semester, we will discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and develop research plans that reflect students' own intellectual goals as historians. Research projects may focus on Philadelphia or anywhere in the Americas (please note that research projects beyond the Americas will require the student to seek an additional mentor beyond Professor Farnsworth-Alvear). We'll visit archives and other repositories in the city; examine digitized manuscript documents in Spanish and English and present our sources in Mr. Block’s classroom; and begin writing a 15-20 page research paper based on primary sources. During the second half of the semester, we will concentrate on supporting and mentoring high schoolers’ work as they pursue their own investigation of Democracy in America, with each seminar participant being paired with a group of high school researchers to mentor their research process. This is an Academically-Based, Community Service (ABCS) course.