HIST 302U: UA Stories: Creating a Digital Past

This course will focus on the University of Arizona (UA) since its organization as a land-grant institution in 1885. Students will be introduced to archival materials such as vintage photographs, student newspapers, scrapbooks, yearbooks, maps, plans, oral histories, government papers, minutes and publications of campus organizations, as well as methodological frameworks for the assessment and analysis of these materials. Students will collaborate on specific projects, focusing on aspects of such topics as student life, campus during wartime, town and gown, outreach, museums, research, campus architecture, UA as a public/state institution, making use of both textual and visual source material to explore a particular question about the past. Students will create a final narrative that is digital in format, such as a website, a documentary, an app, or a podcast. At the end of the semester, students will present these stories as part of a symposium, with an audience invited from the larger community. Projects will be archived under the curatorial auspices of the Department of History.