Black Past Lives: Frederick Douglass’s Rochester

4.0 credits

This introductory course uses abolitionist and human rights activist Frederick Douglass and antebellum Rochester as a common topic for exploring historical research, debate, writing, and public engagement while considering connections between past and present. Students will learn how to study Black Studies and history at the college level by developing research topics; evaluating historical scholarship; understanding historians’ theoretical and methodological approaches; identifying and interpreting primary and secondary sources; assessing perspective and bias in evidence and scholarship; and constructing historical arguments in oral and written forms.