History & Heritage Organizations: Collaboration & Critique

In this course each student will engage closely with one cultural organization in the state of Rhode Island which has both a public mission and maintains collections related to history and heritage. Each student will write a profile of his/her chosen organization (history, collections, operations, etc.) through interviews and research; s/he will then collaborate with one or more other students to create an online exhibition using combined resources from their respective organizations; finally, s/he will critique the ways in which the organization fulfills or does not fulfill its stated mission in terms of current American Studies and public history frameworks.