300-400 level courses are on special topics and are more advanced. They often presuppose some basic knowledge in the field and should be more difficult courses than courses at the 1-199 levels. The department is trying to insure that some 400 level courses, although substantially more difficult, are also small in size; they thus may be suitable for graduate students.
HIST 304 Teaching about American Freedom
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
SEM
This seminar will explore the evolving and contested meanings of freedom and emancipation from the time of David Walker's Appeal, Nat Turner's Rebellion and Garrison's publication of the Liberator through the decades of debate and conflict to the enshrining of the Emancipation Amendments in the U.S. Constitution.
The seminar will be based upon the extensive use of primary sources and structured around the primary documents from the Library Company of Philadelphia and in the "Crisis of the Union" Electronic Archives online through the University of Pennsylvania Library and Department of History.
A primary goal of the seminar will be to assist history faculty of West Philadelphia High School in the development of lesson units on these subjects, built around materials from the Archives, and appropriate to the school's pupils. With these young students in mind, Seminar students will also augment the Archives or develop a subsidiary site, revising the abstracts attached to each document, researching additional relevant documents, developing new abstracts and recommending them for inclusion in the Archives. If appropriate and agreeable to the WPHS faculty, students will also be given the opportunity to assist in the teaching of some of their units to WPHS pupils.
Interested students must have some grounding in 19th Century U.S. History, preferably HIST 176 or 363, or HIST 20.
