Instructions for Harriet Tubman Required Assignment_spring 2023
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Jan 9, 2024
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HARRIET TUBMAN REQUIRED ASSIGNMENT
(50 points) – These are the instructions for the required assignment whether you attend in person or online. If you are attending in person, see also the instructions for the extra-credit assignment.
Due: 11:59 pm Friday, March 17. (I realize some students have midterm exams next week so I will accept this assignment with no late penalty if submitted by 9:00 am on Monday, March 27 but I urge you
to complete it by the 17
th
so as not to be thinking about this over your spring break.)
What you are doing during the event:
If you attend in person, you must sign in.
There will be sign-in sheets for a number of classes; make sure you find the sign-in sheet for this class. (For those who attend online, a Zoom report of time you signed in and exited will be used to determine attendance at this required event.)
Attending in person or online, you will need to take good notes during the presentations and the question-and-answer period. In developing this assignment you will be expected to provide detailed discussions of the presentations/discussion and to provide examples to substantiate your points. Afterwards you want to hang on to your notes as you will also need them for your final in this class.
For this assignment you should draw on:
Your attendance at the “Wanted: Harriet Tubman” event
Readings:
David W. Blight, “The Burden of African-American History: Memory, Justice, and a Usable
Past”
J. M. Johnson, “‘Ye Gave Them a Stone’: African American Women's Clubs, the Frederick Douglass Home, and the Black Mammy Monument”
Renée Ater, "Commemorating Black Soldiers: The African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C.”
Our March 7 – 9 class discussions
Mike Alewitz, “What Are “The Dreams of Harriet Tubman” Videos:
Renée Ater, “Analyzing a memorial: Fern Cunningham’s Step on Board
(1999)” – 2 min, 10 seconds
Renée Ater, “Analyzing a memorial: Alison Saar’s Swing Low
(2008)” – 3 min, 23 seconds
Renée Ater, “Analyzing a memorial: Mario Chiodo’s Unwavering Courage in the Pursuit of Freedom
(2012)” – 4 minutes, 4 seconds
To find these 3 videos, scroll down to the bottom here; they are the last three videos -- https://www.choices.edu/video/who-are-you-and-what-do-you-do-119/
Of course, you may find some of the other short videos here helpful but these three are ones you should view and consider as you write your paper on the “Wanted:
Harriet Tubman” event.
The Assignment:
Keep in mind that you are reporting upon all components of the event – presentations, moderated discussion, and the question and answer period. Your reporting should be grounded in historical analysis, not personal opinion. You want to pull together your observations at the event with your understandings of memorials/monuments/public presentations of history from the above readings, course discussions, and videos to develop your own analysis. You should always acknowledge when you are drawing on the ideas of others. You may cite your
sources in your text – (Examples: As Professor Ater notes, Nina Cooke John described her process as) or you may use footnotes or endnotes. Remember plagiarism is using not just the words but also the ideas of others without acknowledgement. It should be clear throughout your submission when you are presenting your
own observations and analysis, when/how you are building on others’ ideas, when you are synthesizing someone else’s analysis.
Respond to all of the following. You should submit in ELMS one PDF file containing each of these six elements numbered and in order.
1.
In 150 -200 words describe
Mike Alewitz’s Harriet Tubman mural. Description only.
2.
Then in approximately 400 words discuss Mike Alewitz’s intentions in producing the Harriet Tubman mural – how does he explain his design, his process of producing the mural, his goals, what his vision of Tubman is/was, what his vision of how/why this mural should be placed in Baltimore. Draw on his presentation/discussion as well his writing about it.
3.
In 150-200 words describe Nina Cooke John’s Harriet Tubman memorial. Description only.
4.
Then in approximately 400 words discuss Nina Cooke John’s intentions in designing her Harriet Tubman memorial – how does she explain her design, her process of producing the memorial design, her goals, what her vision of Tubman is, what is her vision of why this type of memorial would be good for placement in Newark at this point in time.
5.
In 300 - 400 words compare Alewitz’s and Cooke John’s renderings of Harriet Tubman. Your goal
here is to think about how each represents Tubman, how each situates her in history and in the present. This is not a question about the differences in the form of a mural and the form of a monument but about their understandings and representations of history and their understandings of the place of monuments/commemorations in a community or in a contemporary moment. What do each of these say to us about Tubman, about history, about the
time in which they were produced? For example, do they want to do/convey the same thing about Tubman even if they are doing it through different media? Do they have same or similar ideas of how their memorial could be important in their present moment or in the city in which they were to be placed? 6.
In approximately 300 words discuss how they navigated challenges to their ideas about how Tubman should be rendered. Where did these challenges originate and what are the politics involved in the communities that challenged their renderings?
7.
In a final 300-500 words, draw on the March 7-9 course readings/viewings/discussion of historical monuments and Professor Ater’s short videos on other Tubman memorials to analyze and conclude. You might, for example, compare the different visual representations; consider which, if any, fall into the singular heroic figure category; consider Ater’s ideas about the
importance of memorials/monuments (as presented in her analysis of the civil war monuments and/or the Tubman monuments) and/or consider the hopes that Douglass and/or Black club women had for how African American history might be incorporated into/understood as a central part of the national history more broadly.
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