{"id":1368,"date":"2015-01-29T21:51:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T21:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2016-01-25T23:04:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:04:16","slug":"learning-history-straight-sources-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/2015\/01\/29\/learning-history-straight-sources-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning History Straight from the Source\u2019s Mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cwow\u201d moment is what Dr. Thomas Bahde goes for in teaching history.<\/p>\n

That moment often comes when he can put an original primary source \u2013 something produced in the time period that is being studied \u2013 in front of his students. \u201cIt can be a newspaper, a diary, a piece of ephemera, such as a dance card\u2026,\u201d Bahde says. \u201cYou\u2019re feeling something with your hands, smelling it, seeing how heavily or lightly a person wrote on the paper\u2026. Anytime I am able to sit down with a historically rich primary document, I feel that \u2018wow\u2019 moment, and I want students to feel it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Body_Ryan\"<\/a>

Ryan Atwood<\/p><\/div>\n

Thomas\u2019s wife Anne Bahde shares this passion for teaching with original primary sources. In her position as an assistant professor and librarian in the Special Collections and Archives Research Center within Oregon State\u2019s Valley Library, she works with faculty from all disciplines to help them integrate primary sources into their curricula. In the winter of 2014, the couple joined forces to develop an Honors History 202 course that brought introductory-level students, including non-history majors, into contact with original historical materials.<\/p>\n

The two designed the course, which covers United States history from 1820 to 1920, hoping that students would use primary sources to make their own discoveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first day we went to Special Collections, Anne had filled each table with materials, with no information about any of them,\u201d recalls Ryan Atwood, an HC engineering freshman when he took the class. \u201cThey gave us basic questions, such as \u2018Who made this? Where? And for what purpose?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI was drawn to a map that looked like a classic landscape, but if you looked closer, you saw lines of x\u2019s that didn\u2019t seem to mean anything. And then I realized there were military markings, like German pillboxes, [concrete dug-in guard posts], and it was a battle map. I could figure out where it was; I was able to take this material and then create a story with it!<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is stories.<\/em> I\u2019d worked with some primary materials before this class, but mostly just scans. Here I would hold something and feel how it was frail, how it had been moved a lot, wonder why it was all folded up\u2026. Professor Bahde emphasized that you need to analyze the physical and the intellectual content to bring the story together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Bahde says that making connections with the past like the one Ryan describes is \u201cwhy I do history.\u201d He wants to inspire in his students a sense of empathy with the people of the past, while helping them build critical-thinking habits that can be applied to any sort of source material, historical or current.<\/p>\n

\"Body_Smaller\"<\/a>

Thomas Bahde and Anne Bahde<\/p><\/div>\n

His own undergraduate education, he says, rarely included original material. It wasn\u2019t until he was doing research for his dissertation, when he examined correspondence between a husband and wife during the Civil War, that he felt a sense of connection to the people of the past through the documents they produced. \u201cThose letters were full of spelling mistakes and lacked punctuation\u00a0entirely, but you could almost hear the couple speaking to each other,\u201d he said. \u201cKnowing how dearly each letter must have\u00a0been cherished, it was a privilege to be able to hold them in my own hands, and in some small way, be a part of their connection to each\u00a0other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of primary materials was reaffirmed for the Bahdes during a debate exercise they built into the course. The class was divided into two teams, each working with a different body of sources from the Progressive Era of the late 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries.<\/p>\n

One team was given pamphlets, posters, and books covering topics such as personal hygiene, home economics, sanitary food production, and sexual health. The other team was given primary source materials promoting temperance, women in the workforce, and policies such as the sterilization of immigrants and the mentally ill (based on the then-popular science of eugenics). The first team used their sources to argue that the social reformers of the Progressive Era were doing good work to try and improve the world. The second team used their sources to contend that the reformers were meddling with people\u2019s lives, including trying to literally shape the racial makeup of the nation.<\/p>\n

The debate becoming \u201cquite animated\u201d as students found evidence to support their side\u2019s argument in the different primary sources. Thomas Bahde is convinced that the reason the students became invested in proving their respective sides was \u201cbecause they had the things right in front of them, reading straight from the horse\u2019s \u2013 or source\u2019s<\/em> \u2013 mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cI could say in my lectures until I\u2019m blue in the face that the Progressive Era was complex. But there was impact from the physical things<\/em> staring them in the face and having to make an argument with them and account for that complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne Bahde has documented the impact of this kind of hands-on engagement with primary materials in a 2012 paper she co-authored, \u201cMeasuring the Magic: Assessment in the Special Collections and Archives Classroom,\u201d and in a case study of the Honors College course, \u201cThe History Labs: Integrating Primary Source Literacy Skills into a History Survey Course.\u201d The benefits are significant, and Thomas Bahde has already integrated this approach into his non-Honors history classes and is planning to expand the model to online teaching.<\/p>\n

Ryan Atwood was so \u201cwowed\u201d by his experience in the class that he now has a job in Special Collections at the Valley Library, carrying out research on undocumented materials. His painstaking detective endeavors have fed his fascination with what original sources can reveal. Although Atwood has planned for a career in engineering since early in high school, he is now open to the possibility of switching to history.<\/p>\n

And, ultimately, it is the student response and impact that encourages the Bahdes to continue refining their instructional approach. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine not<\/em> getting survey-level undergrads into the Special Collections and Archives Research Center,\u201d says Thomas Bahde. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible resource for teaching and learning in any discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

By HC Staff<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cwow\u201d moment is what Dr. Thomas Bahde goes for in teaching history. That moment often comes when he can put an original primary source \u2013 something produced in the time period that is being studied \u2013 in front of his students. \u201cIt can be a newspaper, a diary, a piece of ephemera, such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,82],"tags":[95230,784,523],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","category-features","tag-feature","tag-history","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/2205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}