Instructions
Write a problem statement on your chosen research question (200-300 words); one primary source and one secondary source related to your question. Post it on the blog by the start of class Monday after Spring Break.
Example
The hiking trail in Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area, located in Florissant, Missouri, guides hikers through pleasant woods, scenic overlooks over the Missouri River, and multiple sets of stone ruins. Signage in the park informs visitors about the geological makeup of the site and Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, which passed through the area as it moved westward. There is nothing to situate the ruins or the site’s history in the more than 200 years since. The effect is that the ruins become a point of curiosity and vandalism, and the rest of the trail feels like an escape into nature, tucked away in the otherwise suburban landscape of north St. Louis County.
However, evidence of Saint Stanislaus’s history remains, both in the ruins and in the park’s name. After acquiring the land in the 1820s, the Society of Jesus constructed a boarding school for Native Americans with an eye toward training them as interpreters for missionaries. Native American boarding schools functioned as a tool for erasing Native American cultural practices that European settlers deemed “uncivilized.” This school is also where the Jesuits forcibly relocated enslaved families from Maryland to help with the mission. While the residential school was closed after less than a decade, the enslaved families remained when it was converted into a novitiate renamed Saint Stanislaus Seminary. Saint Stanislaus operated for the next 140 years. By 1998, the county had acquired the entire site that now operates as the conservation area.
This project will explore the relationship between the modern recreation space of Saint Stanislaus and the historical traumas that took place there. It will examine the stories that are told and those that are silenced, and how that informs visitors’ relationship to the land and to local history.
Primary source: Spoons Used by the Jesuits at the Saint Stanislaus Seminary. 1814-1831. 2014-074-0010. Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, MO. https://mohistory.org/collections/item/2014-074-0010. Accessed 1 March 2023.
Secondary source: “What We Have Learned,” Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation Project, Society of Jesus. https://www.jesuits.org/our-work/shmr/what-we-have-learned/. Accessed 1 March 2023.
Components
Observation, background, context: Here you might talk about what drew your attention to this topic, what struck you as interesting about it, and/or any important context for the topic.
Problem: What problem or question arises from your observation?
Frame: How are you approaching that problem? What’s your point of view?