Parsing the Past of Our Present in History 10

In a well-attended — though not packed — Sever Hall 113, I settle into a seat a few rows from the front. On the chalkboard, “Please take a handout” is written in large letters. The sheet, “70 Years: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” will introduce today’s lecture on human rights in History 10: A History of the Present.

History 10 is a new gateway course designed to introduce students to the History Department jointly taught by history professors Jill Lepore, Maya R. Jasanoff ’96, and Kirsten A. Weld. Its predecessor, a year-long survey of European history, was discontinued in 2006. This fall, the course’s Canvas page begins with the headline: “Not your high school history class!” Redesigned, the class now exposes students to different ways of doing, practicing, and talking about history.

Each Wednesday lecture begins with a discussion of current events. Today, Jasanoff turns toward Weld and Lepore and raises the Canadian government’s recent expulsion of Indian diplomats. Canada accused the representatives of involvement in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader. For approximately 15 minutes, the team links events of the present with the past, considering the historical precedents for this diplomatic conflict.

“We’ve also built these units or spaces in which the three faculty members can interact with each other,” Weld says to me in her office the following day. “Hopefully, what all of that does is both implicitly and explicitly communicate how history is by definition, by necessity a kind of heterogeneous discipline in which there is space for thinking about the past and the present and the relationship between those two things from a variety of perspectives.”

In light of student conflicts across campus, Jasanoff sees the gateway course as a way to model productive dialogue.

“History looks different depending on where you stand,” Jasanoff says. “It’s important to try to get a look at it from multiple perspectives. And in a way, the work of history, as you may know from your high school education, is how to put together a whole bunch of different perspectives — both of people, but also perspectives on contexts of different scales of evidence, of time frames — to try to explain the course of events.”

Each of the three professors teaches a module individually: Jasanoff taught ancestry and genealogy, Lepore teaches on rights, and Weld will teach later in the semester about memory. “Each third of the course will bear the signature, in a sense, of that faculty members, will give you a sense of how they approach things,” Weld says. “You get one module led by each of three distinct people with these distinct perspectives.”

In lecture, as the professors wrap up their conversations, Lepore pivots towards her students and introduces today’s presentation on human rights. She asks students to put away note-taking devices like computers and notebooks and looks for volunteer scribes. Confused, I turn to my left and watch Annie E. Gombiner ’28 receive a chalkboard and begin diligently etching key terms.

Gombiner subsequently explains to me that Lepore is modeling the relationship between the written word and rights. She says that writing, technology, and rights have evolved in tandem.

Lepore photographs the chalk notes at the end of class and posts them on Canvas for students to revisit. In previous lectures, she’s also supplied clay tablets and ink and parchment. Jasanoff, in contrast, allows for digital note-taking. Weld has yet to decide.

The professors also place themselves in conversation with students. Monday lectures commence with the “Question Box”: students place professors in the hot seat, asking them questions about subjects that interest them. Before class, students submit questions to a form and a few are pulled at random to be answered by the professors.

Thomas E. Scheetz ’28, who I notice listening intently in the center of the lecture hall, sees the “Question Box” as a way to center student interests in course content.

“It forces the professors to explore things that we as students are interested in, and they do so in a way that really creates nuance,” he says.

Thus far, professors have examined and tweaked these unconventional structures. For example, some questions in the “Question Box” are too narrow to inspire sustained conversation.

“It took a little bit of guidance to remind students that they were welcome not to ask us the most deeply informed technical questions, but rather to ask us really anything on their minds,” Jasanoff says.

Weld agrees that questions vary in quality. “The next time we teach the class, I think I would front-load a little bit more guidance to students about what kinds of questions they might want to ask and how they might phrase the question.”

As Lepore begins her lecture, I notice Jasanoff and Weld join their students in the audience.

“It’s such a treat to be able to see your colleagues at work in a way that you don’t normally get to,” Weld says. “For me, co-teaching with these two colleagues has been just a fantastic opportunity to continue learning about teaching and thinking about how to do teaching well. Ideally, that’s a kind of process that is lifelong.”

History 10’s professors are keen to learn from their students’ feedback and continue workshopping the course. Gombiner has found the process of narrowing a research question slightly stressful, while Scheetz wishes there were more clarity in expectations for written assignments.

History 10 has attracted a mixed group of students. Currently, course enrollment sits around 60. According to Jasanoff, the course head, approximately one-third are first-years and two-thirds are non-first-years. Students in the course come from myriad disciplines. Gombiner and Scheetz, specifically, are both considering concentrating in the humanities. History is among their many interests.

Looking forward, Jasanoff hopes that History 10 will grow into a classic introductory course. Thus far, she notes that scheduling conflicts (like having the class in the same block as Economics 10) have posed challenges to attracting students to the course.

Weld sees this first iteration as an experiment. “If you’re going to be involved in a big experiment, it is a real delight to be on that boat with two super colleagues and a bunch of students who have shown themselves to be really up for it, really engaged — really game to enter this lightly uncharted territory with us,” she says.

Weld credits the students with shaping the course, too: “I hope they feel that sense of co-creation, that they’re also contributing to the thing that we’re creating.”