“Giving Spirit to Our Parents' Stories”: (Re)creating Memory, Intellectual, and Social Engagement beyond the Classroom

Abstract

This article illuminates the field trip as an effective pedagogical tool in the undergraduate anthropology classroom. This article emerged from my experiences teaching an undergraduate advanced seminar, African American Anthropology, in which I organized a civil rights field trip to Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Alabama. We went during the 2005 commemorative activities of the fortieth anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” which served as a focal point of the course. Walking tours, museum visits, and other field trips to local and regional sites in the South are discussed as vehicles for engaging student learning in sites that extend beyond traditional course readings, lectures, and films. Memory, identity, and social engagement are discussed as three critical outcomes of the field trip in illuminating American history and African American economic, political, and social experience.