NEH Enduring Questions Course on "Why Are We Interested in the Past?"

FAIN: AQ-50838-13

San Francisco State University (San Francisco, CA 94132-1722)
Megan H. Williams (Project Director: September 2012 to February 2018)

The development of an undergraduate course on the question, Why are we interested in the past?

Develop and teach a question-driven course organized around the human impulse to record and investigate the past, asking what has motivated this interest since its beginnings, what justifications have been given for it and for the varied forms of scholarship and literary production it has inspired, and what their persuasiveness or validity is today. Does the human desire to preserve a record of the past, or to reconstruct one, serve anything beyond of our curiosity? Does knowledge of the past teach us how to live in the present, or what to expect in the future? Can the memory of past events tell us who we are? The course will meet guidelines of the NEH "Enduring Questions" program, from which sponsorship is sought for its development.