From gender studies to geography to art history, Archer offers a variety of senior history courses to serve as deep dives into their respective fields. Each seminar is a semester long, allowing students to choose from a variety of topics during their final year of high school.
Archer’s history seminars were formulated as a response to the decision to move away from teaching Advanced Placement courses. History teacher Bethany Neubauer said the administration wanted to offer more courses. History teachers can propose a seminar and curate it to fill a gap in the curriculum with student interest and engagement at the forefront. All of the courses can be taken as an Advanced Study or a regular class.
Neubauer teaches two art history seminars: Art, Death, and the Afterlife and Becoming Modern. The former focuses on the art of antiquity and how art is used to think about mortality, and Becoming Modern covers how artists and architects have adapted to technological, political, scientific and economic change throughout the centuries.
History teacher Nicholas Graham teaches Voice of Democracy, which focuses on American politics and compares the US government to other governmental systems around the world. He also teaches Modern Spain, where students learn about the history of Spain along with prominent figures such as Adolfo Suárez and Francisco Franco.
Bearing Witness is a seminar on genocides through history and is taught by history teacher Elana Goldbaum. Her course looks at historical events like the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide and restoration efforts in South Africa, while also discussing the definition of genocide and the politics involved.
The Oracle sat down with Neubauer, Graham and Goldbaum to discuss the history seminars they teach.
How does the content differ between Advanced Study seminars and AP courses?
Bethany Neubauer [BN]: The beauty of the seminars is since they’re designed by Archer teachers with Archer students in mind, we know the pace that students can go at, and we can build in opportunities to do research and really engage in the kind of work that historians and art historians do … I’d say that it really has forced me to be very thoughtful about what I include and what I exclude.
Nicholas Graham [NG]: I’m conscious of not wanting to be too focused on the Western world …Wherever I can, I will try to broaden student’s global awareness of global affairs beyond the United States and also beyond Europe because Latin America, Africa and the Middle East often don’t get a look in.
Elana Goldbaum [EG]: Our seminars are designed to explore something a little bit more deeply that may not otherwise be offered or covered … It’s really about depth, complexity and aligning passion. Because history is not a required course for seniors, our hope is that students who are taking a senior seminar [are] taking one that really piques their interest.
What do you love about teaching your history seminar, and why are you passionate about the topic?
[NG]: This is a topic that I think people should know about—it’s fascinating…What is not known about is that Spain has a very dark past and a very violent past. Spain went through a horrible Civil War… Spaniards have never really confronted and come to grips with their past. It’s personal—my grandparents were from that country. This is the history that, in many ways, I grew up with.
[EG]: They are areas of passion for me. I think that any time you have a teacher who is teaching a senior seminar, it’s a topic that they really love. I have been a history teacher now for 18 years. There are a lot of subjects and areas in history that I enjoy, but we all have our passion topics, so it’s kind of a dream come true to be able to teach a course that really aligns deeply with the instructor’s passion, as well.
Do you have a favorite assignment in your class?
[BN]: I really appreciate having that open-ended quality to a course that really didn’t happen very much in AP classes. APs were very much like “I have the information, and I’m giving it to you,” and then you’re going to put it on the exam. I think one of the things I like about the seminars, even with students who aren’t doing it with Advanced Study credit, is that they’re bringing their knowledge and their interest into the class and teaching me about things I hadn’t thought about or wasn’t familiar with before.
[EG]: I have a favorite assignment, and it’s a podcast that the students do. One of my favorite things about teaching seniors is they have so many skills they’ve developed, so they have a lot of choice… It’s intellectually stimulating for me, and I love seeing what they do with their own passion areas. It’s incredibly rewarding to see both their research and their podcast take shape.
