Inspiring a Passion for the Medieval in the Present: Student-led Activities with Manuscripts at Southeast Missouri State University

Abstract

Inspiring a Passion for the Medieval in the Present:Student-led Activities with Manuscripts at Southeast Missouri State University Roxanne Dunn and Vicky McAlister The authors of this article collaborated at Southeast Missouri State University, a comprehensive, Midwestern regional university. Our goal was to engage students with the medieval period and to encourage them to draw similarities between the challenges of that period with modernity. Roxanne Dunn is an archivist and Vicky McAlister is a medieval historian. This article will demonstrate how working with medieval manuscripts in a classroom setting was able to prove the value and importance of humanities coursework while promoting and strengthening the institution's archival collections. Specifically, this paper explores how our collaboration led to the successful incorporation of medieval manuscripts into the classroom: first as "show-and-tell" class visits, then to active-learning hands-on activities, and finally to a student-led collection development activity where students were able to select medieval manuscripts and defend their reasoning for purchase. This article will provide background on the types of students we serve at Southeast and the collections held by Southeast Missouri State University's Special Collections & Archives. We will highlight how the existing collections were parlayed into the purchase of additional materials to develop an extensive teaching collection of medieval fragments and leaves. There were many successful impacts of this collaboration including the development of further experiential activities, library administrator buy-in, and additional monies being allocated to support continued growth of this teaching collection. It is the hope that some of these ideas can be used by other historians and archivists in a variety of settings to promote the importance of humanities coursework and continued collection development in this area. [End Page 113] Background Southeast Missouri State University is a comprehensive, public, regional university that attracts many first-generation college students. The campus has nearly twelve thousand students, between traditional and nontraditional students, undergraduate and graduate students, and online and in-person student learners. As a consequence, we engage with a diverse student body who come from a range of backgrounds and enter college with differing levels of preparedness. Students from the St. Louis metro region are often heard commenting that Cape Girardeau is the smallest place they have ever lived in, while for another large portion of our students coming from rural areas mainly to our south, Cape is the largest "city" they have ever lived in. Students in history classes mirror the wider student population. They tend to be motivated and flexible and respond positively to experiential learning. The Department of History and Anthropology has a reputation for incorporating hands-on learning techniques and the medieval history classes are no exception. Here we try to breach the gap between students' personal experiences and those of medieval people to encourage effective learning. Because of student background upon entering college, they can struggle with medieval history, which feels very alien and distant to them, both in terms of geography and time period. Therefore, we consistently work to improve our communication of the medieval period. One successful method has been to collaborate with Special Collections & Archives to use tangible heritage to assist with learning goals. Special Collections & Archives is within Kent Library, Southeast Missouri State's main library. It is a typical, small-to-medium academic archives that was only very recently established in 2001. Special Collections & Archives acquires, preserves, and makes accessible research materials that document the historical and cultural experience of the region of Southeast Missouri and the history of Southeast Missouri State University. While the holdings of the unit are developed in relation to instructional and research interests within the university, all holdings are available for use by visiting scholars and the public, as well as by Southeast faculty, staff, and students. Special Collections & Archives has over nine hundred processed collections in its holdings, which make up approximately 5,200 linear feet. The unit staff have also digitized and made available over ten thousand historical images and textual documents via an online platform with free public access. The unit also conducts ten to twenty "one-shot" primary sources and archival literacy instruction sessions each semester, depending on which classes are taught in...