Historical Agency in History Book Sets (HBS)
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A strategy that combines fiction and nonfiction texts to guide students in analyzing historical agency.
Authors of historical fiction for children and adolescents often anchor their narratives in powerful stories about individuals. Emphasis on single actors, however, can frustrate students’ attempts to understand how collective and institutional agency affects opportunities to change various historical conditions. History Book Sets (HBS) that focus on experiences of separation or segregation take advantage of the power of narratives of individual agency to motivate inquiry into how collective and institutional agency supported or constrained individuals’ power to act.
History Book Sets combine a central piece of historical fiction with related non-fiction. By framing a historical issue or controversy in a compelling narrative, historical fiction generates discussion regarding the courses of action open not only to book characters, but to real historical actors. Carefully chosen non-fictional narratives contextualize the possibilities and constraints for individual action by calling attention to collective and institutional conditions and actions.
- Select a piece of well-crafted historical fiction that focuses on a historical experience of separation or segregation (NCSS Notable Books is a good place to start). The example focuses on Cynthia Kadohata’s (2006) Weedflower—a story that contrasts a young Japanese-American internee’s relocation experience with a young Mohave Indian’s reservation experience.
- Select two pieces of related non-fiction that provide context for the historical fiction. Non-fiction should include courses of action taken by groups and institutions, as well as individuals. This example uses Joanne Oppenheim’s (2007) “Dear Miss Breed”: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference and Herman Viola’s (1990) After Columbus.
- Select photographs that visually locate the events in the literature. Duplicate two contrasting sets of photographs.
- Reproduce templates for poem (Template A) and recognizing agency chart (Template B). The recognizing agency chart works best if students begin with an 8½x11 chart and then transfer their work to larger chart paper.
- The time you need will depend on whether you assign the historical fiction for students to read or use it as a read-aloud. Reading a book aloud generates conversation, ensures that everyone has this experience in common, and lessens concerns about readability. If students read the book independently, plan on three class periods.
- Recognizing Changing Perspectives. In making sense of historical agency, it helps if students recognize that different people experience historical events differently. For instance, the main fictional characters in the example have quite distinct views of relocation camps. The packets of photographs help children interpret changing perspectives, and the biographical poem provides a literary structure for expressing their interpretations.
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- Organize the students in pairs. Give half the pairs Packet A (Japanese Experiences); half Packet B (Indian Experiences). Students write captions for the pictures explaining how the experiences pictured influence characters’ view of the relocation camp.
- Drawing on their discussion and readings, each pair of students writes a biographical poem (see Template A) representing how their character’s ideas and attitudes change over the course of the story.
- Display captioned pictures and poems where students can refer to them during the next activity.
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- Recognizing Agency: What Can be Done?
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- Distribute Recognizing Agency chart (Template B). Work through the chart using a secondary character in the historical fiction as an example.
- Assign pairs of students to a fictional or historical participant. For example, students might investigate the fictional main character or a family member or friend or students could investigate a historical participant.
- Display charts. Discuss:
- Why do some people, groups and institutions seem to have more power than others?
- How can people work most effectively for change?
- Can you identify strategies used to alter other historical experiences of separation or segregation?
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- Agency Today. After considering the kinds of agency expressed by people during the past, students might write an argument for or against contemporary issues that surround the topic. For instance in the example, students investigate efforts to restore the relocation camp.
- Book selection presents the most common pitfall in developing and using an HBS. Historical fiction presents a two-pronged challenge: If the narrative in the historical fiction does not hold up, good historical information can’t save it. On the other hand, a powerful narrative can convince students of the “rightness” of very bad history. Never use books you have not read! With that in mind:
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- Make sure you check out reviews of historical fiction and non-fiction (i.e. Hornbook, Booklinks, Notable Books) or more topic-specific reviews such as those provided by Oyate, an organization interested in accurate portrayals of American Indian histories.
- Choose non-fiction emphasizing collective and institutional agency that contextualizes actions in the novel.
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- Because students’ identification with literary characters can be quite powerful, use caution in identifying one historical group or another as “we.” Implying connections between historical actors and students positions students to react defensively rather than analytically. None of your students, for instance, placed people in relocation camps or on reservations, but referring to past actions by the U.S. government as something “we” did can confuse the issue. Students are not responsible for the past, but as its legatees they are responsible for understanding what happened well enough to engage in informed deliberation about the consequences of past actions.
- Historical Book Sets are designed to work against tendencies to overgeneralize about group behavior (i.e. assuming all European Americans supported internment). In response to overgeneralization, ask for (or point out if necessary) counter-examples from the book set. Occasional prompting encourages students to test their generalizations against available evidence and to think about within-group as well as between-group differences.
- Historical Agency: Internment and Reservation at Poston. Background for the teacher: Groups and individuals exercise power differently, depending on the social, cultural, economic, and political forces shaping the world in which they are acting. In the case of the internment and reservation systems, for example, the power of Japanese-Americans to resist internment was quite different from the power of the War Relocation Authority to enforce relocation. Or, consider that the options available to Japanese men were quite different from those available to women or to the Native American residents of the Poston reservation. Introducing the concept of historical agency—what action was possible given the historical moment—can be a powerful tool for making sense of past behaviors. Power is a familiar concept to students who, with relatively little prompting, understand not only that larger forces may limit or expand opportunities for action, but that individuals may not all respond in the same way to those opportunities. Beginning by recognizing different perspectives on an event prepares students to consider why people might take different action, and comparing responses to action prepares students to consider available options for expressing agency. This, in turn, reinforces an important historical understanding: nothing happens in a vacuum. By placing so much attention on individual agency (often some hero or heroine), history instruction too often ignores persistent patterns of collective and institutional agency. This is not to dismiss narratives of individual agency. This HBS begins with Sumiko’s and Frank’s story because individual agency captures students’ interest and engenders a level of care that motivates further investigation of the differential agency expressed by the individuals, groups, and institutions that framed Sumiko’s and Frank’s historical choices. * Agency refers to the power of individuals, groups, and institutions to resist, blunt, or alter historical conditions. Differential agency refers to differences in potential for and expression of power within and between individuals, groups, and institutions.
Bamford, Rosemary A. and Janice V. Kristos, eds. Making Facts Come Alive: Choosing Quality Nonfiction Literature K-8, 2nd ed. City: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2003.
Levstik, Linda S. and Keith C. Barton. Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools. London: Routledge (2005).
National Register of Historic Places Travel Itineraries
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San Francisco during World War II, Mississippi's Indian Mounds, and Cumberland, Maryland, are just three of the more than 50 cities, towns, and rivers across the U.S. to which this website provides virtual access. In Baltimore, Maryland, a clickable map allows users to wander from the USCGC Taney (the last surviving warship present at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941) docked at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, to the house where Edgar Allen Poe lived in the mid-1830s, to the Union Square-Hollins Market Historic District to learn about Baltimore's oldest public market still in operation, and on to 40 more sites around the city. Each landmark is introduced with photographs, brief essays providing historical context, and tourist information.
Some travel itineraries are grouped by theme. For example, Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement presents information on Arkansas's Little Rock Central High School, Virginia's Robert Moton High School, and the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Many of these sites includes links to lesson plans in NPS's Teaching With Historic Places. Updated regularly, this website is useful for teachers, students, and tourists alike.
American Radicalism Collection
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This website contains 129 pamphlets, documents, and newsletters produced by or relevant to radical movements. Groups represented by one to 30 documents include the American Indian Movement; Asian Americans; the Black Panthers; the Hollywood Ten; the Ku Klux Klan, the IWW, and the Students for a Democratic Society. Additional situations covered include the Rosenberg case, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Scottsboro Boys. Additional topics include birth control and the events at Wounded Knee. This is a small but useful resource on radicalism, political movements, and rhetoric.
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
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The long history of struggle for equal rights by various ethnic groups in Seattle, including Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans; Jews; and Latinos is documented on this website. Primary and secondary sources integrate labor rights movements with struggles for political rights, as is evident in the "special sections," that highlight the Chicano/a movement, the Black Panther Party, Filipino Cannery Unionism, the United Construction Workers Association, Communism, and the United Farm Workers. Each section brings together oral histories, documents, newspapers, and photographs that are accompanied by written and video commentary to provide historical context. The collection of more than 70 oral histories of activists is especially useful for understanding the lived experience of racism and its especially subtle workings in the Pacific Northwest. Together, these resources provide important national context for the civil rights struggle, too often understood as a solely southern phenomenon.
Jewish Women's Archive
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These exhibits and resources are valuable for studying American Jewish women's contributions to their communities and the wider world. Women of Valor focuses on 16 notable historic women—including Congresswoman Bella Abzug; radical Emma Goldman; philanthropist Rebecca Gratz; poet Emma Lazarus; actress Molly Picon; Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold; and nurse, settlement worker, and political leader Lillian Wald. Women Who Dared offers oral history interviews of Jewish women activists in text, audio, and video formats. Interviewees discuss activism in the context of Jewish and gender identity, values, and situations, and elucidate the path to activism, challenges, rewards, and impact. The Encyclopedia, browsable by keyword, time period, and country, includes 2,000 articles on Jewish women's history. This Week in History looks at moments in the lives of Jewish American women corresponding to the date; visitors can subscribe to this feature by RSS feed or email. On the Map pinpoints locations important to Jewish American women's history—and to Jewish American women today. Visitors can add their own locations with photos. Jewesses with Attitude, the JWA blog, features articles on Jewish American women past and present and on other topics relevant to the lives of Jewish American women today. The site has also digitized nine volumes of The American Jewess. Most recently, the Jewish Women's Archive has compiled objects, photographs, and personal accounts of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the aftermath, complete with 100 oral histories, blog postings, emails, and other firsthand accounts.
USC Archival Research Center
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These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.
Marchand Archive
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A memorial to Roland Marchand, the late historian of popular culture and advertising, this website presents a slide library with more than 6,100 images, including more than 2,000 advertisements, drawn from Marchand's collection. The images are organized into more than 40 major categories and close to 200 subcategories.
The site also offers 48 lesson plans designed by Marchand, each with an introduction, an essay assignment, and 10 to 40 primary source documents. The lessons cover a diverse range of controversial topics, including the Antinomian Controversy, the reactions against Chinese immigrants, the Pullman Strike, the Women's Suffrage Movement, and Watergate. The site will be useful for researching popular culture and advertising, as well as numerous other topics in American history, such as women, wars, immigration, labor, and African Americans.
Tangled Roots
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These more than 200 documents explore cultural connections between the experiences of African Americans and Irish immigrants in America. Materials relate to individual leaders, historical events, economic, political, and social factors, and cultural achievements. A section entitled "Making Connections" offers 15 questions about historical events and people that represent the intertwined histories of Africans and Irish in America.
Other topics include the end of English participation in the slave trade, the emergence of the nativist Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s, and Ku Klux Klan activities against Catholics and blacks after the Civil War. A section on "Acceptance" explores perceptions of individual and group identities and four timelines focus on displacement, oppression, discrimination, and acceptance in America. "Voices" provides a sample of 13 public statements and interviews on ethnicity and race from ordinary modern Americans. The site also provides a bibliography; an essay by writer James McGowan, a black American with an Irish paternal grandfather; and links to related websites.
Chinese in California, 1850-1925
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These 8,000 items document the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials include photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and artwork.
Access is provided through nine galleries, each containing an introductory essay and 70 to 575 items. Four galleries present materials on San Francisco's Chinatown, including architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders. Additional galleries deal with Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiments concerning the Chinese. Visitors may search by keyword, name, subject, title, group, and theme. The site will be useful for studying ethnic history, labor history, and the history of the West as well as Chinese-American history.