Online Archives and American Studies Pedagogy Abroad: A Case Study

1 Strategic Approaches to Course Design

A few words of guidance, encouragement, and caution regarding archive-heavy course design are merited here, at the outset of this discussion:

First, it is important to note that no instructor is expected to start completely from scratch when designing a course that involves primary source archival research. Initial drafts of my syllabus drew heavily on a previous course syllabus, and then, after a whole semester of piloting the new syllabus and assignments, I made (many) further changes before finalizing the materials for the Smithsonian. In other words, the Smithsonian syllabus is the result of two semesters of rethinking, retooling, rewriting, reorganizing, and revising.

Second, a syllabus only needs to be rooted in archives as much as the instructor wishes it to be – or, more practically, as much as the instructor’s time, energy, and interest allow. One might slowly venture into archivally-based pedagogy simply by tacking a single archive-based assignment onto a pre-existing syllabus rather than designing a wholly-integrated syllabus from the ground up.

Third, the AAA’s TWPS fellowship materials are all available for free online,^[5] so interested instructors can browse other syllabi and assignments, selectively choosing ideas that fit with their own teaching needs and styles.

Fourth, potential instructors should intentionally allot copious time specifically for the design of course materials and for their own exploration of the form and function of the digital archives selected for use. Going into the semester very organized and prepared helps to establish the instructor as a grounding and guiding presence for students who can sometimes feel overwhelmed by their first foray into archives. Put another way, going into the semester unorganized and unprepared can help breed a sense of academic panic among students.

Finally, archival pedagogy is, undoubtedly, hard work. It requires significant planning and preparation, and at times it requires different ways of thinking and different modes of leading students intellectually and methodologically. But it is also fun, authentic, and transformative – for the instructor and for the students. If you’re curious about teaching with primary resources, there is no better time to begin than now, and there is no better guidance to help you get there than this research cluster in Anglia.

2 Course Syllabus

The AAA required TWPS fellows to create and submit a syllabus and at least one archive-based assignment for open access publication on their website. The guidelines were broad and open-ended, so I chose to retool a recent syllabus into a new one for an upcoming course that incorporated primary research in the AAA and other Smithsonian collections.^[6] The new course was titled, “Indigeneity, Archives, and the American Literary Canon”, and it studied the related phenomena of Native survivance, rhetorical sovereignty, engaged resistance, Indigenous media, and popular, archival, and academic cultural biases. Because the course concentrated closely on archives and their relationship to cultural biases and cultural meaning-making, I recognized the incorporation of primary source research through a major institution like the Smithsonian as an excellent opportunity to foster authentic experiential engagement with course topics while also interrogating complex issues related to archival authority, power dynamics, and bias.

The pilot course I ran consisted of seven 3-hour sessions across seven weeks, while the resulting OER syllabus was designed for a course of thirty 1.5-hour sessions across fifteen weeks, although it can easily be adjusted to different term lengths and instructor needs. I conceptualized it from the start as a course that could be used in American Studies courses and NAIS courses in the US and in English-speaking classrooms abroad – especially Austrian ones (see the “Local Connections” section below). The pilot course content involved multiple genres of literature, film, and art (including poetry, short fiction, newspaper writing, photography, memoir, documentary film, painting, ledger book drawing, the novel, the western film, the western television show, the comic strip, the graphic novel, the wampum belt, and beyond) that each week were informed by scholarship on that topic. These materials were most often not formal, traditionally-conceived archival materials (even if they discussed archival topics, such as the relative – and sometimes complete – absence of Native voices in US-American archives, or the way that contemporary Indigenous artists retool archived historical visual art depicting Native Americans as a method of critiquing archival bias),^[7] and the course could have functioned on its own without any formal archival additions – albeit with less profound effects.

The course’s archival encounters occurred most directly through three consecutive assignments rooted in the Smithsonian’s digital collections. These were: a scavenger hunt in the AAA; a “mini-project” bridging the AAA and the overarching Smithsonian “Collections” catalog; and a final project. They were strategically designed to gradually scaffold students’ immersion in digital archives and to build their archival skills and confidence throughout the semester. While the OER Smithsonian syllabus includes suggested issue dates and due dates for each assignment, these may be adjusted to instructor and student needs. Because my pilot course was scheduled for a shortened term, the turnaround time between assignment issuance and submission was much shorter.

Before discussing the assignments in more detail below, allow me to paint a picture of my class. It met at 8:00 a.m. in a basement classroom that was large, despite the small class size of nine students. We often rearranged the desks into a seminar table, and the intimacy of the setup helped encourage student participation in a course that was, in more than one way, foreign to them. The students came from Austria, the Czech Republic, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, often walking in with sleep in their eyes, coffee in their hands, and very limited knowledge of American history, art, and culture in their minds. They had never worked with archives before, they had never come across Native American and Indigenous Studies before, and I had the challenge of introducing them to these major areas of academic inquiry at the same time. I knew from the TWPS fellowship that a scaffolded approach was necessary, and that, as daunting as the task may have seemed, it would be possible for students to simultaneously develop archival research skills and learn about course themes and content by providing strategic, carefully calculated assignments. I discuss these assignments more below.

3 AAA Scavenger Hunt: “George Catlin papers, undated”

In the course’s very first session, students received their first archival research assignment, titled the “AAA Scavenger Hunt”.^[8] The size and scope of the AAA’s holdings of materials related to nineteenth-century painter and pseudo-anthropologist George Catlin are vast, and this imposing feature is amplified many times over when one also considers the Smithsonian’s further collections related to Catlin. The scavenger hunt is a way to slowly tour students through just some select parts of the Smithsonian’s many materials on Catlin. I chose Catlin as the subject of this assignment because of his established status as a canonical American artist who fundamentally shaped American (mis)understandings of Native peoples through his artwork and traveling exhibitions. As one may imagine, his nineteenth-century views of Native Americans carry their own complex – and sometimes shockingly heavy – baggage that provide ample opportunities for students to apply lessons learned in the course’s secondary readings to primary sources they encounter in the archive.

The scavenger hunt is, simply put, a quest to find different bits of information throughout both the landing page and finding aid for the AAA’s “George Catlin papers, undated” collection. To provide context, guidance, and encouragement, I devoted approximately ten minutes at the end of class to introducing students to the AAA website, explaining what the AAA is, outlining the website’s basic interface, and laying out the framework of archival categories and terms like “items”, “collections”, “finding aids”, “topics”, “themes”, and “tags”. This was enough information and guidance for them to begin the scavenger hunt, which they would complete in groups of two and submit the next week.

The twenty-five-question scavenger hunt is perhaps overly simple, but its primary purpose is to introduce students to the process of exploring a collection, understanding its scope, contents, arrangement, and provenance, identifying and understanding its metadata, and accessing its individual items, among other things. Questions 1–8 focus on the collection’s AAA landing page, addressing topics like Catlin’s lifespan, the range of creation dates for the collection’s materials, the types of materials in the collection, and the overarching subject matter of Catlin’s work. Questions 9–21 deal with the finding aid, including important pieces of information such as proper citation method, where to find out about copyright and material usage restrictions, material arrangement within each series, and which series a researcher interested in a particular aspect of Catlin’s life would use. Questions 22–25 concentrate on two printed archival items in the collection – Catlin’s 1872 petition to Congress and an accompanying advertisement for his “Indian Collection” – requiring students to locate the appropriate item in the finding aid and then follow its link to engage directly with the items’ digital scans and metadata. These final four scavenger hunt tasks require students to read through the primary sources themselves, and one question provokes deeper critical thinking and intellectual engagement with the primary source documents.

The intended outcomes of this assignment commonly center on bolstering students’ understanding of and confidence in archival research processes. The assignment’s primary purpose is to introduce students to digital archive research in a simple, scaffolded way, asking informational questions whose answers mostly appear in order on the collection’s AAA landing page and in its finding aid – simply requiring them to patiently read through those documents. Another key objective is for students to learn how to use the finding aid in particular, which can be an intimidating genre of reference material, and the functions and effective uses of which should not be assumed to be commonly known (by any student or faculty researcher). A final intended outcome is for students to enjoy and be inspired by engagement with a new tool that opens them up to interesting possibilities – for this class and for other potential future academic research.

Student feedback on the scavenger hunt surprised me – I had been anxious that they might have found it extremely boring or overly challenging. But when I asked students in class to each provide one word to describe their experience with the assignment, answers included: “new”, “invigorating”, “cool”, “easy”, “interesting”, “fun”, and – most critically – “decent”. In their end of term anonymous course evaluations, students remarked that this assignment: “[g]ave a good first look at the archives”; “was something interesting and new. It was easy to do [and] there were enough instructions”; “was new to me and super interesting”; and “was a good starting assignment because you could really read yourself into the topic and theme of the course and surf through the important websites”.

4 George Catlin Mini-Project

The second archival research assignment students encountered was the “George Catlin Mini-Project”, which builds on the skills and experience acquired during the scavenger hunt and begins to develop student capacity for self-led archival exploration and research. The mini-project prompts students (working in the same groups of two) to choose two archival items to analyze. One item must be by George Catlin, and the other item must be by a Native creator; further, one of the two must be from the AAA, and the other must be from another Smithsonian collection. Together, students wrote and submitted two-page written analyses of the items and delivered five-minute oral overviews of their items, providing their own critical interpretation of the items, connecting them to class topics and concepts, and reflecting on what they might teach us.

There are several key purposes for this project. First, it puts the students’ scavenger hunt skills to use. Second, it pushes students to explore both the AAA digital archive and the overarching Smithsonian “Collections” catalog more independently – that is, not following a strict set of procedural instructions to answer the instructor’s informational questions, but instead working in pairs to explore the resources, surprises, and serendipity of the archive. The small-group work was also essential so that students could see the kinds of questions or interest that somebody else might bring to an item as they approached it. A third purpose of this project was to encourage students to think critically about white, Euro-American depictions of Native peoples and cultures that continue to be foundational to popular (mis)understandings of those peoples and cultures – and to juxtapose that with analysis of a Native-created item that may challenge those depictions.

The results were even stronger than expected, likely because the student-led nature of the research fostered a sense of student ownership of and investment in the project. The five-minute oral presentations often continued for ten or fifteen minutes, as presenters demonstrated genuine engagement with the materials and concepts, and as their classmates asked follow-up questions, made informed observations, and connected the materials with their own items or with other materials from class. In end-of-term course evaluations, one student observed that this assignment was a “[g]ood build up to the final project in terms of research”. Another reported that “[i]t was interesting. I liked that we were free to choose what material to use”. Some students reflected on the challenges they underwent with the mini-project: “At first, it was somehow confusing having to look through so much archival material to decide [what to work with]”; “I didn’t know that an online archive could contain so much information”; “[It was a] little difficult to be honest. But when you’ve found the right sources [...], it was a good practice on describing them (of course, in a formal manner!)” [sic]. These difficulties are to be expected in archival research, and the challenge seems to have paid off. Students remarked that they learned skills that would help them become “very scientific in [their] research”, that they were more likely to now “use archives as a source for papers and other assignments” in future courses, and that the assignment helped them “learn to think more critically”.

5 Final Project

The final assignment for this class was not a traditional academic essay; instead, it was an independently researched and composed eight-page brochure and corresponding 5–7 minute oral presentation that analyzed four archival documents (including one handwritten document, one printed document, one item of visual art, and one material object) in conversation with analysis of one literary text from class, and that incorporated at least five peer-reviewed scholarly sources. These chosen materials – and thus the brochure as a whole – were to relate to one central course topic or theme that interested the student. The overall goal for students was to effectively apply the critical concepts and methods learned through scholarship not only to a literary work (as is typical in end-of-term assignments), but also to primary sources found and selected through their new archival research skills – experiencing for themselves the rich benefits of studying primary materials. While not a traditional academic essay, the suggested format of the brochure – an introduction page, a scholarship review page, pages dedicated to analysis of individual archival items, and a conclusion page – still corresponded with the basic structure of an academic essay. Further, I had chosen the brochure format because of the course’s continued emphasis on material media, but, based on advice received through the TWPS fellowship, I also told students they could create a Google Site – one of the easiest, most user-friendly tools for creating a free website. The Google Site is listed as the preferred format on the OER Smithsonian syllabus, since it bypasses the formatting and layout difficulties of designing a text- and image-based brochure from an A3 piece of paper, and – more importantly – because it facilitates the incorporation of digital sources like oral history interviews, videos, audio, and external links. Further, most students already have Google accounts and are familiar with its various web products. Nevertheless, if students wish to use other website-building tools out of ethical objections to Google,^[9] they may certainly do so, but for now its ease-of-use makes Google Sites a practical tool.

The results were far more searching than conventional term papers tend to be, and virtually every project stood out as a unique, well-crafted result of significant time, energy, and thought spent connecting primary source research to class concepts and materials. One student, for example, created a Google Site that discussed various documents related to residential and industrial schools in the United States and Canada. The student brought into mutual conversation a handwritten document from around 1920 titled “Indian Revival in Virginia” (Nelson 1920), an 1893 photograph of students and faculty at the Carlisle Indian School (Choate 1893), a shoe designed to assimilate Native women at the Carlisle Indian School to white US-American culture (“Carlisle” 1885), the 1921 memoir of Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Dakota Sioux) detailing her time at boarding school, and the poem “Monster, a Residential School Experience” by Kamloops Indian Residential School survivor Dennis Saddleman (2019) (Nlaka’pamux and Okenagan Nations). Another student studied Native Americans sports, games, and dolls in art, literature, and archives. Yet another chose the topic of language and culture revitalization, studying language erasure and reclamation through archival items including documents written in the Cherokee syllabary.

The anonymous student feedback on the final project provided in course evaluations suggested that, despite the rigor of the assignment, it was personally and academically rewarding. Some students found it challenging to find four different types of materials related to their central topic. Others noted difficulty in relating secondary scholarship to primary archival materials that are not directly mentioned in the scholarship. Students remarked that it was “definitely something different”, “very interesting and creative”, “cool to do something different”, and “super fun and interesting. We were on our own, focused on our probably most interesting points”. Students later listed ways that the final project helped them: “learning to produce something meaningful”; “New perspectives. Exploration. Research”; “Improv[ing] academic writing”; and one said that they “became more critical when it comes to choosing material and sources”. Approximately one-third of the class identified the final project as the most important assignment for developing their understanding of course concepts, course materials, and academic proficiency, and their explanations included that “it was the most in-depth task and required lots of research and needed more accuracy”; that “I had to go through hundreds of documents to find one that suited my ‘needs’. I also had to be very critical when choosing my primary material”; and that it required them to “[do] and [learn] something different and in a different way”.

6 Local Connections

One strategy that I used for teaching with archives abroad was to emphasize connections between the US-American topics and archival materials on the one hand, and local (Austrian) museums, archives, and culture on the other hand. To bridge the geographic and cultural gap between my central European and Balkan students and the course topics in Native American and Indigenous Studies, I scheduled an extra credit in-person class visit to the Styrian State Archives to view archival items directly related to Native American cultures. The purpose of this visit was to help link what some students described as a personally and geographically abstracted topic with their own local culture, while also provoking critical questions of why a central European archive has these materials, why historical central European publics may have been interested in these materials to begin with, and how these cultural items are used by the archive and its visitors in the twenty-first century. I also added to the syllabus a link to Weltmuseum Wien’s (Vienna World Museum’s) holding of the early sixteenth-century “Quetzal Feather Headdress” that had somehow ended up in Austria by 1596. I paired this archival holding with recent news articles about unsuccessful Mexican efforts to repatriate the headdress (efforts which included Mexican activists’ hacking of the Weltmuseum’s audioguide system to replace the museum’s description of the item with their own “to protest [its] history and ownership” [Shaw 2022]). Finally, I also included English translations of two short stories by Karl May (2019), the canonical (in the German-speaking world) late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German writer of Westerns, whose famous protagonist Winnetou is consistently known by virtually all my central European students. Including May’s work on the syllabus helped students reflect on their own cultures’ exploitation of and harmful behavior toward Native American cultures, and it also provided an opportunity (informed by scholarship) to discuss museology and the politics of representing Native American peoples – at the Karl May Museum in Radebeul, Germany (King 2016), at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York City and Washington, D.C. (Carpio 2008, Caro 2008), and elsewhere (Däwes 2020). These cultural connections helped students understand their cultural and personal connections to course topics that at first glance may have seemed far removed from their own lived experiences. By drawing attention to historical and ongoing museological and popular cultural practices that further entrench cultural bias and misunderstanding toward Native American and Indigenous cultures, these conversations also provided students with a sense of agency as informed consumers of and participants in global economies of information, exploitation, and consumerism.

7 Course Results & Conclusion

The anonymous end-of-term course evaluations indicate that students began the course with an average confidence level of 1.57 out of 5 in their archival primary source research and ended the course with a confidence level of 3.86. According to students, working with archival primary sources rather than only traditional course materials “made the whole process more interesting” and made it “much better [...] because you literally get real pictures of the items and can dig into much more reality”. One student said that “I gained a deeper knowledge and no[w] reflect more critically”. Another student stated that working with the Smithsonian’s digital archives “helped me a lot, because I was able to see/find the items/works/art. After finding items, [...] my engagement c[a]me to a higher level”. The skills students identified developing during this course included “research”, “archival research”, “critically assessing primary sources”, “critical thinking”, “exploration”, “[c]oping with time”, “much better [...] academic writing skills”, and “interpreting different types of materials”. Students unanimously evaluated the course and the archival research tasks as positive experiences.

Students also reflected positively on their personal engagement with course topics. Students identified the strongest aspects of the course as: “Raising Awareness, especially in Europe!”; “Gaining knowledge & being able to reflect on own stereotypes that seemed normal. Becoming more sensitive for stereotypes & misconceptions”; “I’ve become more aware of Indigenous communities in America: their struggle and their resilience, among other things”. In response to a question of how working with the Smithsonian’s online archives affected their engagement with and understanding of course topics, they also answered overwhelmingly positively, including: “Understanding [of course topics] = definitely helped. Especially as a history student this is/was valuable. So many culture[s] are being forgotten in curricula and coursebooks, so this helps to raise awareness!” Another answered that: “For me the topic in general has always been interesting, though my knowledge (now looking back) was very limited. Using the Smithsonian Archive helped spark more interest & visualize concepts & issues”.

My students entered this course with little confidence and little skill in archival primary source research, but that changed over the course of the term – and largely over the course of three incrementally scaffolded assignments. By working throughout the semester with the Smithsonian’s online collections, students disavowed notions of archives as dusty, cloistered vaults into which they dared not – or could not – enter; rather, they discovered that archives could be much freer, more welcoming spaces that they themselves now had the skills and confidence to use. The results of these developments led to fascinating research projects, which were genuinely a delight to read and assess. Most importantly, students entered the next stage of their careers as researchers, teachers, or everyday consumers of information with better skills and strategies for engaging with primary source materials – whether in person at a local archive, from thousands of miles away through a digital archive, or in day-to-day life beyond the archive. The experiences and tools discussed in this article emphasize that using digital archives available across geographic and cultural borders facilitates close critical engagement with course materials and concepts by beginner, intermediate, and advanced students alike, and it empowers those students as budding researchers and as global citizens.