New Collections-Based Modules in Existing Undergraduate Courses
Through this curricular development opportunity, doctoral students in the humanities gain leadership experience in curricular development, digital pedagogy strategies, and collaborative skills by working with a faculty collaborator, as well with librarians, archivists, and curators, to create new collections-based modules for undergraduate courses.
2022 Awardees
Isaiah Bertagnolli (History of Art and Architecture) will develop a module with Dr. Alex Taylor for the HAA1022: Exhibition Presentation course that draws content from his upcoming show on the transgender artist Greer Lankton at the University Art Gallery (UAG) to inform the student’s development of their own curatorial content.
In order to raise students’ cultural awareness about the French-speaking world, Yacine Chemssi (French & Film and Media Studies) will develop a module with Dr. Brett David Wells to provide students with textual, archival and media materials about four French-speaking regions (Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia) for the course FR 0104: French in a Global Context.
Using the University Library System’s Rose Rand Papers archive, Vivian Feldblyum (Philosophy) will develop a module with Dr. Nicholas Rescher for the course PHIL 1200: 20th Century Analytic Philosophy to provide a better understanding of the Vienna Circle and encourage students to use “Archives of Scientific Philosophy.”
To enhance students’ cross-cultural understandings of Shakespeare, Yujin Jang (English) will use the MIT Global Shakespeares: Video and Performance Archive to develop a module with Dr. Caro Pirri for the course ENGLIT 0580: Introduction to Shakespeare.
Sebastian Leal-Arenas (Hispanic Linguistics) will develop a module with Dr. Marta Ortega-Llebaria for intermediate and advanced Spanish language courses using a variety of digital collections to improve Spanish intonation.
- Not lost in translation, but lost in intonation
- Teaching Intonation by using Collections and Animated Avatars
2021 Awardees
Alexus Brown (Linguistics) will develop a module with Dr. Dan Villarreal that uses the Pittsburgh Speech and Society conversational interviews, hosted by the University Library System, to enhance student engagement and contribute to modernizing the linguistic research methods that are taught in the course LING 1269: Linguistic Variation and Change.
Using the University of Pittsburgh Russian and East European Film Collection or the official Gorky Film Studio’s YouTube channel, Denis Saltykov (Slavic Languages & Literatures) will develop a module with Dr. David Birnbaum in which students analyze a movie adaptation of a fairy tale using one of the critical frameworks that are taught in the course RUSS 0090: Russian Fairy Tales.
2020 Awardees
See the 2020 cohort flyer (PDF).
For the Archives and the (in)Visible Body module, LeTriece Calhoun (English) will work with Dr. Annette Vee to use the Black Panther Party materials found in Pitt’s Archival and Special Collections to examine the construction of the black body in the course Seminar in Composition: Gender Studies.
Using the Digital Transgender Archives, Sritama Chatterjee (English) is working with Dr. Julie Beaulieu to develop a module entitled, Fragments, Ephemera and Periodicals: Reimagining Global Trans History that will engage deeply with queer and trans self-fashioning for the Transgender Studies course.
- Listening to the Archive: Reimagining Global Trans History
- Mess, Letters, Reviews: Teaching Transgender Histories from Digital Archives
Caitlin Dahl (French) is working on a module to be integrated into Dr. Chloé Hogg’s Kings and Queens course that will focus on Pitt’s University Art Gallery collection of Jacques Callot’s Les Grands Misères de la Guerre (1633) prints, which are important documents of the visual representation of violence.
- Visual Representation of Violence in Jacques Callot’s Les Grands Misères de la Guerre
- Historical Violence, Contemporary Power: Looking Through Callot's Prints of War
For Dr. Gretchen Bender’s Museums: Society and Inclusion course, Rebecca Giordano (History of Art and Architecture) will be producing a module on the Image of the Black in Western Art digital collections to expand student understanding of the social construction of race.
- The Image of the Black in Western Art
- Collaboration and My Work with the Image of the Black in Western Art
Working with Pitt’s Cap and Gown Club Records and the Kuntu Repertory Theatre Records, Victoria LaFave (Theatre Arts) will develop a module to encourage students to think critically about their own engagement with, and responsibility to, performances and aesthetic productions for Dr. Patrick McKelvey’s Enjoying Performances course.
Using the Image of the Black in Western Art archive, Jacqueline Lombard (History of Art and Architecture), with Dr. Christopher Nygren, is developing a module that examines identity, Blackness, and race in Renaissance art for the Italian Renaissance Art course.
- Visualizing the Italian Renaissance as a Space to Talk About Race
- Race, Representation, and the Renaissance: Virtual Gallery Visits for the Art Historical Classroom
Emily Mazzola (History of Art and Architecture)’s module aims to teach students to become proficient at using digital museum collections across the world to conduct art historical and museum studies research in Dr. Barbara McCloskey’s course Foundations of Art History.
- Museum Collection Databases and the Digital Lives of Objects
- Museum Collection Databases and the Digital Lives of Objects: Part 2
Krystle Stricklin (History of Art and Architecture) will utilize several major digital collections, including the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection, with Dr. Jennifer Josten to teach students about the Cuban exile experience through oral histories, photographs, and short readings in the course Art and Politics in Modern Latin America.