Labs for humanities courses?

[mamselle]

Oh, I forgot two other parallel structures, also both in the performing arts.

Our majors dance classes (2, 3, or 5 per week each of ballet and modern, depending on your major profile) each only counted as 1 or 2 credits, because they were seen as "lab" (i.e., experiential) classes; the classes were 1.5-2.0 hours long each, but the credit hours didn't reflect the total time in class.

(Boy, 10 hours a week, just dancing! I do miss that...)

The theater program's costume and stage/scene/lighting design classes each required so many hours of lab work in the costume and set design workshops, each, as a separate item, but again only gave a single credit for, say, a weekly 3-hour stint doing whatever you were told to do in those shops.

But you couldn't pass costume, etc., without them, they were a required component of the grade, all the same.

M.

[Caracal]

I've thought about this idea for history courses. The main goal wouldn't be to teach how to use the library, but how to analyze and think about primary sources.

One of the problems of teaching history is that the primary sources students read are usually very packaged. I don't use readers and select sources myself, but even so, a lot of the stuff you necessarily end up having students read is speeches by prominent people, selections from memoirs, published works, etc. Even when you're reading things from obscure figures, they are usually pretty curated and out of their archival context.

There are lots of good reasons we do this, but it gives students a picture of the past that is kind of flat. The actual picture you get from archives is almost always both weirder and more mundane. Church members did have a dispute about their pastors's anti slavery views, but they actually spent far more time dealing with the guy they rented the church cellar to who proceeded to stable his cows there. Often the sources don't really tell you the things you want to know, or only give you small bits of information.

Obviously, outside of a senior project you can't usually have students doing real archival research, but it is possible to have them work with sources that are less digested. It's a process that often works better in person than assigning it as reading. If you just give students a bunch of scanned legal documents or something, they are likely to just get overwhelmed and not be able to figure out how to work with it. In class, you can have them work together, ask questions and model the processes.

I try to do some of this stuff in my classes, but it can be hard to incorporate for all kinds of structural reasons and if there was a separate lab, it would be much easier and you could do more interesting and advanced things.

[Hibush]

I've thought about this idea for history courses. The main goal wouldn't be to teach how to use the library, but how to analyze and think about primary sources.

this description sounds great. It is hands on wiht a small group interacting on an assignment. A weekly three-hour lab with the report due at the end of each session (i.e. no homework) should warrant on credit hour by the standards of a chem lab.

[marshwiggle]

Obviously, outside of a senior project you can't usually have students doing real archival research, but it is possible to have them work with sources that are less digested. It's a process that often works better in person than assigning it as reading. If you just give students a bunch of scanned legal documents or something, they are likely to just get overwhelmed and not be able to figure out how to work with it. In class, you can have them work together, ask questions and model the processes.

I try to do some of this stuff in my classes, but it can be hard to incorporate for all kinds of structural reasons and if there was a separate lab, it would be much easier and you could do more interesting and advanced things.

Those were interesting examples. Part of why I've thought of the "lab" idea is that those sort of explicit components of a course devoted to developing specific skills would make it much easier to establish the value of a program, rather than just making claims about developing "soft skills" without any details. It's easy in a job interview to mention the kinds of equipment, software, processes, etc. that came up in labs instead of just saying "we developed basket-making skills."

And as noted above, labs can include some things you really think students should do, but wouldn't automatically have to do in order to complete the assignments and exams for the course.

[mamselle]

This is on the grad level, but musicology classes and art history studies often have a small collection of manuscripts that students work with.

There are also summer teaching projects at schools with more of these resources, sometimes paired with, say, language classes in Latin, Arabic, Middle French, etc., for students who are specifically interested in that type of research from the outset.

I taught a couple of classes on the internal processions I'd researched for a week-long program at the Orleans IHRT facility, awhile back. Medieval musicology students from three or four schools in France got together and heard lectures and examined MSs in their areas of interest. It was co-taught by one of the departmental instructors at one school, and the IHRT facility director, both of whom I'd met in other settings; it was cool seeing how my one, fairly small set of findings on an internal cathedral procession helped them visualize what they were seeing in their daytime studies.

Likewise, in art history, a school with a good collection of manuscripts (and a few they don't mind setting aside for extended--albeit careful, supervised--handling) might offer a workshop for other schools in the area; the Columbia archives in NYC has done that in the past, as have others in San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland, etc.

But some of those materials might not be ones you'd want undergraduates working with--or only those whose interest in the field was genuine and who understood why handwashing and so on had a purpose, it wasn't just to prevent them from getting their grubby little paws on the 'pretty pictures.'

(Well, or maybe it was, sort of, but out of basic curatorial concerns, not fencing the table...)

M.

[dr_codex]

This is on the grad level, but musicology classes and art history studies often have a small collection of manuscripts that students work with.

There are also summer teaching projects at schools with more of these resources, sometimes paired with, say, language classes in Latin, Arabic, Middle French, etc., for students who are specifically interested in that type of research from the outset.

I taught a couple of classes on the internal processions I'd researched for a week-long program at the Orleans IHRT facility, awhile back. Medieval musicology students from three or four schools in France got together and heard lectures and examined MSs in their areas of interest. It was co-taught by one of the departmental instructors at one school, and the IHRT facility director, both of whom I'd met in other settings; it was cool seeing how my one, fairly small set of findings on an internal cathedral procession helped them visualize what they were seeing in their daytime studies.

Likewise, in art history, a school with a good collection of manuscripts (and a few they don't mind setting aside for extended--albeit careful, supervised--handling) might offer a workshop for other schools in the area; the Columbia archives in NYC has done that in the past, as have others in San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland, etc.

But some of those materials might not be ones you'd want undergraduates working with--or only those whose interest in the field was genuine and who understood why handwashing and so on had a purpose, it wasn't just to prevent them from getting their grubby little paws on the 'pretty pictures.'

(Well, or maybe it was, sort of, but out of basic curatorial concerns, not fencing the table...)

M.

I think graduate programs in general are better at having discrete skills courses, although my current place does have a few upper division humanities courses that would apply.

Those of you who think mastering citations is easy didn't have to sit through Bibliography I and Bibliography II, which were far from easy courses. I still remember, 30 years later, many of the skills that were introduced to me then.

[Caracal]

This is on the grad level, but musicology classes and art history studies often have a small collection of manuscripts that students work with.

There are also summer teaching projects at schools with more of these resources, sometimes paired with, say, language classes in Latin, Arabic, Middle French, etc., for students who are specifically interested in that type of research from the outset.

I taught a couple of classes on the internal processions I'd researched for a week-long program at the Orleans IHRT facility, awhile back. Medieval musicology students from three or four schools in France got together and heard lectures and examined MSs in their areas of interest. It was co-taught by one of the departmental instructors at one school, and the IHRT facility director, both of whom I'd met in other settings; it was cool seeing how my one, fairly small set of findings on an internal cathedral procession helped them visualize what they were seeing in their daytime studies.

Likewise, in art history, a school with a good collection of manuscripts (and a few they don't mind setting aside for extended--albeit careful, supervised--handling) might offer a workshop for other schools in the area; the Columbia archives in NYC has done that in the past, as have others in San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland, etc.

But some of those materials might not be ones you'd want undergraduates working with--or only those whose interest in the field was genuine and who understood why handwashing and so on had a purpose, it wasn't just to prevent them from getting their grubby little paws on the 'pretty pictures.'

(Well, or maybe it was, sort of, but out of basic curatorial concerns, not fencing the table...)

M.

I think graduate programs in general are better at having discrete skills courses, although my current place does have a few upper division humanities courses that would apply.

Those of you who think mastering citations is easy didn't have to sit through Bibliography I and Bibliography II, which were far from easy courses. I still remember, 30 years later, many of the skills that were introduced to me then.

Yeah, although I think it is more useful in some disciplines than others. I assume a lot of it has to do with how collaborative a discipline is? Lots of people in my discipline use note taking software and seem to like it. It is decidedly not for me. My brain just doesn't work that way. I know a lot of people who also don't find it useful.There's probably value in having some sort of seminar or something where advanced grad students go through their process or explain how to use software, but there wouldn't be a lot of value in laying out some prescribed method. But, I don't have data that other people need to use to write something. Nobody else really needs to care about my process.

[AeroProf]

I saw a book that may be relevant to you in the new University of Minnesota Press catalog: The Lab Book:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-lab-book
Some chapters involve using labs in humanities divisions.

[Hibush]

I saw a book that may be relevant to you in the new University of Minnesota Press catalog: The Lab Book:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-lab-book
Some chapters involve using labs in humanities divisions.

Great suggestion. No science labs at all in that book, so I hope the title doesn't deter readers.

In science publishing "online before print" is the norm. The physical process of making and distributing copies takes time after all. In contrast this book is available in hardback and paper, but they are sitting on the ebook until December.

[mamselle]

In science publishing "online before print" is the norm. The physical process of making and distributing copies takes time after all. In contrast this book is available in hardback and paper, but they are sitting on the ebook until December.

In the humanities, that's like giving away the cow before the milk.

M.

[pepsi_alum]

It's uncommon, but I have seen intro-level classes in my discipline (humanities-social sciences bridge field) that have labs, usually at SLACs or community colleges. The rationale that I've heard for it is to ensure that students all come out of a multi-section course knowing the same skills. I've also heard of labs being required so that students can learn specific technology or software required to complete the class.

Much as the above makes intuitive sense to me, I think it's one of those things where the devil is in the details. A well-conceptualized humanities lab taught by a qualified instructor that pairs well with the main class could do a lot of good. A lab that's an afterthought or not well-conceptualized is probably just going to lead to student resentment and extra work for faculty.