Innovation

In fall of 2019, as an Archival Expeditions research fellow in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, I studied pedagogical applications of digital and physical primary sources. I paired with Professor José María Rodríguez García to update a module on Pedagogical Missions of Spain from his undergraduate survey course on modern Spanish literature and culture. Working in collaboration with a cohort of fellows and archivists, I developed four lesson plans that integrate an archive of documentary photographs with the digital mapping tool ArcGIS; that recreate a traveling art exhibit of reproductions that forms part of this community outreach program from 1930s Spain; and that invite students to relate transcriptions of oral poetry (frontier ballads, romances) to their geographical origins and to assess the political implications of these acts of cultural mediation. Several of these lessons or variations on them were also incorporated in the my fall 2020 course Culture on Wheels. View the module, along with worksheets for hands-on archival activities here: