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History in Your Community This document describes an assignment for HIST 104 DCE. The assignment addresses two of the goals of the course: learning to think like a historian, and proficiency in discursive prose. Requirements
You must do two things to complete the assignment. 1. Visit a historical museum or a historic site. It is not possible to define precisely what constitutes a “historical museum” or a “historic site,” and so let’s stick with museums or sites that are officially constituted or designated as such. Historical museums are constituted by historical organizations; historic sites are designated (and usually marked) by historical agencies. You already know what I’m talking about in a common-sense way, but I want to be as explicit as possible for purposes of the assignment. If you have a question whether a museum or site is suitable, ask your instructor. The museum or site can be anywhere—in Fargo, in your old home town, in your current residence, in Moscow, for that matter—but it must be a physical museum or site, not a virtual one. 2. Write a paragraph (about 100 words) reporting on your visit to the museum or site and your thoughts about it. This paragraph should be sound in composition and should be not only descriptive but also reflective. You should make an evaluation of the museum or site in the manner of a historian (see remarks and rubric below). When you have completed your paragraph, send it to your instructor by e-mail, with the subject heading, "History in My Community." (Be sure to put in the subject heading, because your instructor gets a lot of mail.) You have to submit the assignment by e-mail; no written reports will be accepted. Here’s a hint about evaluating a museum or site in the manner of a historian. Recall the discussion in Lecture 1 about the purposes of History: judgment and identity. Museums and sites are not usually about judgment; they are about identity. In constituting a museum or designating a site, someone is asserting an identity. Someone is telling a particular story in a certain way. The story has purposes, values, and interpretations in it. Sometimes these are explicit, sometimes you have to induce them, and sometimes they are sort of mixed up, but it is up to you to note and evaluate them. Concisely, since this is a short assignment. The assignment earns up to 20 points toward your soft-points total in the course. The assignment may be repeated, with each instance worth up to 20 soft points. Evaluation of the AssignmentYou will receive a score for the assignment as an e-mail reply from your instructor. Here is the rubric by which your work on this assignment will be evaluated.
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