Listed in: First Year Seminar, as FYSE-106
Rick A. Lopez (Section 01)
This class offers students the opportunity to learn more about their past through archival research and DNA analysis. Knowledge about the lives of those who came before us and helped make us who we are can impact how we understand ourselves and our future. Such knowledge also impacts how we view the world, and our connections to other people. Students will practice various strategies for recovering and narrating their own stories of home and of family (with a broad understanding of what “home” and “family” mean). Next, each student will conduct genealogical research, store their findings into a structured database, and read histories of migration, race, and nation formation in various parts of the world. Students will have the opportunity to get their DNA analyzed using 23andMe (if they have not previously done so) and will choose whether to share their findings. Next, students will select a particular person, moment, place or time that they discovered through their genealogical research. This will become the inspiration for an original historical research project using digital archives and published secondary literature. Students will finish the course by working together to reflect upon how the things they and their peers discovered about their own and each other’s pasts shape how they think about the changes and challenging transitions they are currently experiencing as the newest members of the Amherst College community.
To learn about a past iteration of the course, visit https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2019-spring/college-row/rooted
Fall semester. Professor Lopez
Course Materials