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EDUCATION
Inspiring Minds
In a first-time collaboration between THNOC and Bard Early College in New Orleans, local students learn to make history.
To researchers, the vast holdings of The Historic New Orleans Collection can seem like a thick mineral deposit, a raw source of potentially precious goods. Scholars extract and refine the material, shaping it into published works or useful databases and setting it within the larger context of existing research.
Mining for academic gold—intensive primary-source research—is a skill many students don’t learn until graduate school, but this past spring, The Collection hosted a small band of young scholars-in-training. The eight high-school juniors and seniors, from all over the city, attend Bard Early College in New Orleans (BECNO), a program that offers inquisitive students in underserved communities college-level courses, for actual credit. THNOC Curator of Education Daphne L. Derven teamed up with BECNO’s director, Stephen Tremaine, and professor Rien Fertel to bring the students to The Collection. There, they learned firsthand how to extract history narratives from raw archival material.
Fertel designed the resulting course—“New Orleans: Theorized, Historicized, Narrated, Observed, and Curated; or, BECNO meets THNOC”—around the collaboration with The Collection. The class focused not only on the facts of New Orleans history but also on how history is told and revised, the role of museums, and the function of scholarship.
“It’s very college-like, very liberal arts,” Fertel said. “It asks, ‘What is history? How do we create history and imagine history? What is a museum? Who can start a history museum?’”
Adds Derven: “This is a remarkable example of experiential learning that has provided our students with research skills and experiences they will use throughout their future careers.”
The students, who integrate Bard coursework with offerings at their regular high schools, attended the THNOC class twice per week. One weekly session was spent in the BECNO classroom, with Fertel lecturing and guiding discussions about assigned readings, such as Lawrence N. Powell’s The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans and Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot.
Rien Fertel, visiting professor of urban studies at Bard Early College in New Orleans
Darrell Howard, L. B. Landry-O. P. Walker College and Career Preparatory High School
Patrick Do, International High School of New Orleans
Savanna Brewer, International High School of New Orleans
Anton Brown, New Orleans College Prep
Summer 2014 n