This week, in focusing on my final project, I have been able to make great progress in creating a digital learning opportunity for my target audience. I decided that my final project is going to consist of a website built to engage undergraduate history students, just starting college, in learning to both examine and challenge commonly held historical narratives. My goal is to help these students discover, that through the close examination of primary sources, many of our most commonly held historical narratives are either untrue or grossly oversimplify that which is much more complicated.
I will accomplish this by focusing on one of the most well known historical narratives about the United States, the idea of the United States being the “Great American Melting Pot.” When discussing immigration to the United States in the history classroom, the story is presented that various immigrants who arrived in the United States all came together in a “melting pot” to become American and live harmoniously. However, when we examine primary source documents written by the immigrants themselves, we find that the American immigrant experience was often one of conflict between the ethnic groups already present in the United States and the newly arrived immigrants. By describing the United States as the “Great American Melting Pot,” we are overlooking many of the bitter and decisive conflicts that newly arrived immigrants faced when trying to establish themselves in their new homes.
To challenge and push back against the historical narrative of the “Great American Melting Pot,” I will have students examine primary source documents that tell the story of one Eastern European immigrant group who first arrived in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, the Carpatho-Rusyns. The sources I have chosen highlight the hostility and bitterness the Greek Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns faced from the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. For the Carpatho-Rusyn people, their unique Greek Catholic faith made them stand out in the United States and led to a long struggle for these immigrants to find their place in the United States. I am using these sources and the story of the Carpatho-Rusyn people in the United States, to demonstrate to students that commonly held historical narratives are often oversimplifications that ignore the experiences of people in the past.
So far I have made good progress on completing my final project. I have established the goals for my project, what I want my target audience to take away from my project, and the framework of my project. All of these I have described above. In addition, I have also went through Father John Slivka’s 1978 book Historical Mirror Greek Rite Catholics 1884-1963, that provides hundreds of primary sources written by Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants during the early years of the Greek Catholic Church in the United States, and picked out nine primary sources that I want students to examine. The sources I have picked, highlight the conflict between the Greek Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns and the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. From these nine sources, students will be able to gain an insight into the struggle Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants faced to establish and practice their unique faith in the United States. In addition to finding the nine primary source documents, I also gathering images that I will include in my final project to provide a visual element to the sources that students will examine.
The next step in completing my project will be to first figure out the layout and design of the project website itself. This will involve designing the website in a way that students can easily navigate through the different elements I will include and that my target audience can understand the way I want them to navigate through the content of my project. From here I will then write the background information that I will provide to students viewing my project along with getting my primary sources and images onto the website in a format that is easily accessible to my audience. Finally, I will provide students with a set of questions to answer after they review all of the primary sources I have provided to help them think about what they read and how it challenges the historical narrative of the “Great American Melting Pot.”
Exploring the interviews with former students and the educational digital history projects has provided me with important elements to keep in mind when creating my own project. These include to design my project in a format that is easy to navigate my target audience, to make sure I provide clear context and background information to my audience, and to make sure that the lessons and learning objectives are clear and evident in my project.
