Early American Women's History: Teaching from the Archives

FAIN: EH-50452-14

Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI 02906-1012)
Elyssa Tardif (Project Director: March 2014 to July 2016)

A two-week college and university institute for thirty participants on early American women's history based on archival sources.

The Newell D. Goff Center for Education and Public Programs at the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Community College of Rhode Island seek NEH funding for a summer institute for community-college teachers. This institute intends to explore the subject of access through three lines of inquiry: women's struggles to access particular social, civic or legal arenas in early New England life; our struggles and successes as researchers to access and contextualize the voices of marginalized women; and 21st-century students' difficulty in accessing the primary sources that tell women's stories. We will seek to address the practical concerns of community-college faculty in history and literary studies in using libraries and archives with their students, while establishing best practices for doing so effectively. Finally, we will explore successful models of collaboration with local archives and historic sites to facilitate student access to primary-source research and engagement.