Created to face challenging history such as:

Additional resource link: https://tpscollective.org/guidelines-toolkit/ethically-teaching-primary-sources-that-reflect-histories-of-violence-hate-and-oppression/

·         Students Read Who Killed Hammarskjold by Susan Williams before visiting  special collections 

o   The book looks at the events, issues, people, politics, narratives that surround the death of U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold [his plane crashed/was shot down in flight in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in 1961]

o   In class, we create a “Murder Board” (a nod to police procedural novels and TX shows where the detectives create a board with suspects and information) 

o   We ask students working in teams to jot down on post-it notes the names of everyone who was a source of evidence about this death as well those who had a stake in African politics at the time.  Each group puts up their post-its and then we discuss (duplication of voices/voices missing). 

o   At next class we give students working in pairs materials from our collections that we have that connect to the Hammarskjold death and African politics at the time.  

o   Teams report out on what they found and we decide whether to add these voices to the board and we talk about what kind of evidence we have for this—what we have a lot of what we’re missing. 

o   We ask if any new insights or questions about this history are emerging. We also ask student to talk about what surprised them . 

·         Objectives 

o   help students to understand the lifecycle of records to understand the complexity  and contested nature of Hammarskjold’s death 

o   Use diverse evidence to support assertions 

o   Work effectively in teams

o   Practice revising opinions and ideas based on new evidence.

Courses involved: Devised Theatre course  and History course on Crime Punishment and Human Rights 
 
 History professor and I selected the GvE collection materials into 30 different voices. Each of the students in the history course received a character and a sheaf of documents related to that person.
 Using guidelines for using archival materials to create devised theatre then wrote scenes from the perspective of one of the 30 people. We shared these scripts with the Devised Theatre course and they selected 3-4 stage. 

The two classes met and the Theatre students performed the scripts followed by discussion  Courses: 
 Devised Theatre course 
 History course on Crime Punishment and Human Rights 
 
 

Asks student to think about embodying archival materials as a way experiencing synthesizing the materials. 

We project archival images on the screen and then students move their bodies in response 

9:15-9:35→ Students work in pairs to analyze one illness/disease that is explored in a book (each book will have a label of the disease it covers), and then write about how they would STOP misinformation from spreading–they pretend their classmates are on a medical board and they have to present a public service announcement that will stop any misinformation from spreading (can be purely text, visual, or a combination of the two)–research the disease using your source, as well as any other primary or secondary source you can find online, and then write your elevator pitch for the PSA to present 

9:35-9:55→ Presentations (each group gets 2 minutes) and group reflection

So....kind of a think-pair-share with a theatrical twist...