Kate Culkin
Professor, Department of History, Bronx Community College
Writing the World through Memorials
In my American history courses at Bronx Community College, one of my primary goals is to help students develop an understanding of the idea that history is an interpretation, not a repetition, of facts. Throughout the semester, we analyze material that invites students to examine the factors that influence historians' interpretations, as well the power dynamics at play in those influences. In the Spring and Fall 2022 semesters, I have also developed an assignment which asks students to create a memorial to a person, people, or event they identify as important to understanding American history. The project does not have to be in the form of a typical memorial, such as a statue; it can be a mural, a game, a children’s book, a recipe and cooked dish, or really any physical form, as long as students can explain how their choice is appropriate for their subject. The assignment asks them to function as historians, making decisions about who or what deserves memorialization and in what form.
Although teachers could adapt this project to any history class, it resonates with students at Bronx Community College in particular ways. The student population is overwhelmingly Latinx (as of Spring 2020, 57%) and Black (as of Spring 2020, 36%).[1] In reflections they write at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester tracking their ideas about how they define history and how historians decide what to write in and out of history, students routinely report that, in earlier history classes, they have not felt their heritages were represented and that absence led them to feel alienated from the subject. There is another site-specific reason I wanted to develop a project on memorialization at Bronx Community College. The school is the home to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a legacy of when the campus served as New York University's uptown post; the outdoor rotunda is filled with 96 bronze busts who were elected into the hall via national competitions from 1901 until through 1976.[2] As the majority of “Great American” honorees are white men, this monument can reinforce the alienation many students feel from American history. The final project gives students a broad mandate, allowing them, if they choose, to select a subject they feel has not been given the attention it deserves and think through how they want to memorialize it through a physical object. It thus gives them a chance to push back against the definition of “Great American” enshrined on their campus.
I introduce the final project after midterms. By then, we have had eight weeks of analyzing secondary sources which reveal and critique the interpretive work historians do, as well as examining different ways historians disseminate information to the public. Assignments include: Talitha Leflouria's “When Slavery is Erased from the Plantations,” which appraises how the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson incorporate the history of enslaved people into the museum experience; Herbert Kohl's “The Politics of Children's Literature: What's Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth,” which examines the erasure of Parks' activism in children's books; an excerpt from the documentary The Latino Americans which focuses on efforts of Los Angeles high school students to diversify the curriculum and teaching staff of their school; and an interview on Democracy Now! with the creators of the documentary Decade of Fire, which exposes how news reports and other narratives blamed residents for the fires in the Bronx in the 1970s, obscuring the roles of landlords and redlining policies.[3] By the time we begin discussing the memorial project, then, students have thought about the historical process in complex ways and are in the mindset to work as historians, not just consumers of history.
While I have experimented with incorporating the Hall of Fame into my assignments before, Spring 2022 was the first time I asked students to develop a physical project. I made this move largely in response to the pandemic, which has forced all of us to spend so much time on our computers and in virtual spaces. I had found, like so many others, when I logged off and did something with my hands--knitting, planting daffodils, writing a postcard--my brain seemed to de-fog.[4] I wanted to encourage students to do the same.
The assignment consists of writing a proposal, creating the physical memorial, and a writing a short essay explaining their selection and the significance of the form of the memorial. The proposal asks them to explain why they have selected their subject, sketch out the form of the memorial and its significance, identify three sources, cite them using MLA or Chicago Manual of Style, explain why they have selected the sources, and write out their plan for how they will make time to complete the project. Having the proposal several weeks before the end of the semester allows time for students to incorporate my feedback and for me to reach out to students who seem to be struggling with the assignment. For the final project, they can bring the physical object to class or submit an image of it via Blackboard. I realize the irony of having students submit digital images of physical projects, but in a time when half my classes are still asynchronous, it is a necessity, and even students in my hybrid class are often coming from work and find it difficult to carry in models. The final essay expands on the work of the proposal, with a longer discussion of the subject’s significance and the significance of the memorial's form. In my hybrid class, students give brief, informal presentations on their projects on the final day of class that allow us all to learn from one another. In future semesters, I am going to ask online students to share their assignments on a blog or discussion board. Students can, using a Google form, opt in to having their work featured in the small gallery in the History Department and on the department's social media accounts; I make it clear their grade is not tied to agreeing to displaying their work. I made small tweaks in my second pass with the assignment to clarify my expectations, and having examples of student work made explaining the assignment easier. I also, guided by feedback from the TLH leaders, asked students who opted into to sharing their work online to use a Creative Commons license.
For reasons I am still teasing out, in both semesters students in my asynchronous courses grasped the assignment more clearly than those in my hybrid courses, despite the hybrid students having the seeming advantage of me explaining the assignment in person and the opportunity to ask me questions in real time. [I made videos for the asynchronous students--one introducing the assignment and one providing examples--and of course set up online meetings with any student who requested one.] The proposals in the hybrid section this semester were especially disheartening as several students did not seem to understand the need to create a physical memorial, even though I had given a presentation with real-world examples and examples for student work. To clarify the project, we collaboratively developed a rubric based on the assignment; the task required them to read the assignment carefully and articulate the requirements and allowed me to get a sense of what they thought I expected. It was a useful exercise that, going forward, I will do when I first begin to discuss the assignment. I also want to tweak the essay prompt to ask students to reflect explicitly on their experiences of working on a physical object.
While there have been frustrations, I have received positive feedback from students on the project and been thrilled by many of the memorials. One benefit is that students who struggle with writing have an opportunity to showcase other skills. In other cases, students who anxiously told me that they are not artists early in the project have been proudly submitted their work at the end, reporting they are excited to share it with their families and friends. Highlights include an embroidered portrait of Harriet Tubman, a model of a statue of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonja Sotomayor slotted for a place on campus near the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a graphic novel on the early life of Emma Goldman, and a set of trading cards detailing history and accomplishments the Tuskegee Airmen by one student and a set about Dolores Huerta. One student used her cousin’s 3-D printer to make a statue of Susan B. Anthony, one made a Caribbean curry to commemorate Shirley Chisholm, and another commemorated the artist Faith Ringgold by making a quilting square in the style of Ringgold’s work. When I submitted several students' projects for the History Department’s award in Spring 2022, given each semester, it had the additional benefit of helping spark a conversation about non-essay based assessment with my colleagues. I look forward to continue to develop this project over time, incorporating advice from my colleagues and ideas I have learned in the Transformative Learning in the Humanities fellowship, particularly from my partners in this project, Shawna Brandle, Dino Sossi, and Yan Yang.
The assignment and rubric, along with examples of student work, can be found in the resources section of this manifold publication.
This project is licensed as a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial--Share Alike 4.0, which lets others remix, adapt, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as I am credited and new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
“About BCC: Facts and Figures,” Bronx Community College, http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/about-bcc/facts-figures/, accessed Dec. 3, 2022. ↑
For more on the history of the campus and uses of the Hall of Fame in BCC courses, see Kate Culkin, “A Bridge, not a Wall: Uses of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College” in Remaking the American College Campus: Essays, ed. b Jonathan Silverman and Meghan Sweeney (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2016), 57-78. ↑
Talitha Leflouria's “When Slavery is Erased from the Plantations,” Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2, 2018; Herbert Kohl, “The Politics of Children's Literature: What's Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth,” Zinn Education Project, accessed Dec. 3, 2022; The Latino Americas, episode 5, “Prejudice and Pride,” directed by David Espar and Manual Tsingaris, aired Sept. 9, 2013 on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/latino-americans-episode-5-prejudice-and-pride/; Democracy Now!, “Who Burned the Bronx? PBS Film ‘Decade of Fire’ Investigated 1970s Fire That Displaced Thousands,” aired Oct. 30, 2019 on PBS, https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/30/decade_of_fire_film_1970s_bronx. ↑
Perri Klass, “In a Stressful Time, Knitting for Calm and Connection,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/well/family/pandemic-knitting-election-stress, accessed Dec. 3, 2022; Alessandro Ossalo, “The Pandemic’s Gardening Boom Shows How Gardens Can Cultivate Public Health,” The Conversation, April 21, 2021, https://theconversation.com/the-pandemics-gardening-boom-shows-how-gardens-can-cultivate-public-health-181426, accessed Dec. 4, 2022. ↑