No Textbooks to Buy: A Freshman Seminar on Manuscripts of the American South

Laura Clark Brown
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

     Full text: PDF
     Last modified: June 9, 2008
     Presentation date: 02/01/2008 1:00 PM in Woodruff Jones Room
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
Laura Clark Brown is a librarian and archivist for the Southern Historical Collection (SHC)—a leading repository for the study of the American South located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library. She is currently serving as the project director for a grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant project, titled “Extending the Reach of Southern Sources: Proceeding to Large-Scale Digitization of Manuscript Collections,” joins archivists with scholars of the American South to determine best practices for the mass digitization of the SHC’s holdings. In addition to her grant-related duties, Ms. Brown co-teaches a First Year Seminar with Professor Connie Eble. The seminar, "Interpreting the South from Manuscripts," uses the Southern Historical Collection as a "text" and a "laboratory"; through immersion in primary source materials, the course introduces freshmen to manuscript research methodologies and fosters historical thinking and new understandings of the past.