Students Connect Community to Public Humanities, National Parks, and Climate Change in Course and New Educational Videos
Nov. 20, 2024
By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor of History Felicia Jamison recently spearheaded a course on Public Humanities, National Parks, and Climate Change that has strengthened students’ connections to their community.
This course and partnership among UofL, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park, and The Lincoln Museum has resulted in a collection of student-produced videos that are featured on the museum’s website, geared towards educating the public about the impact of climate change.
“I would say that historical sites, especially one like the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Historic Park, play a crucial role in the fight against climate change through education about environmental issues,” said Hannah White, a graduate student and member of the cohort who is pursuing a master’s degree in public history. “Historical sites provide a much more accessible route to learning about big, often complicated issues, such as climate change. By collaborating with a historical site on this project, our class—and by extension, the University of Louisville—was able to create a set of informational videos that can be shared with a wide, diverse audience about the effects and history of climate change within Kentucky.”
The project originated from a year-long collaboration between the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park (ABLI) and The Lincoln Museum. Funded by a National Park Services grant, “A Park for Every Classroom” aimed to help organizations learn about climate change and integrate that knowledge into their sites. In 2022-23, the group, which included Jamison, Rob Thurman, and ABLI park ranger Noelle LeGrand, met regularly, culminating in a summit at Estes Park, Colorado. There, they joined five other national park groups and educators to explore ways to disseminate climate change information to local educators. This course emerged as a direct result of that collaboration.
“It was essentially a class where students could learn about climate change, Abraham Lincoln, and the history that is told at the historic park,” Jamison said. “The end goal for any public humanities or public history class is to create a project that you can make accessible to the public.”
Bunny Hayes, a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities (2028), MA Communication `23, and MSc Sustainability `21, participated in the course. Hayes used the opportunity to research invasive plant species and their relationship to climate change. Hayes discovered a cycle in which climate change encourages invasive species to spread, which allows the soil to release trapped carbon. That released carbon fuels climate change.
“The hands-on course was inspiring and gave me the chance to create educational materials to help others learn and grow as responsible, Earth-minded citizens,” Hayes said.
Rob Thurman, Assistant Director of The Lincoln Museum in Hodgenville, highlights that Abraham Lincoln lived through a dramatic climate change event during his youth in Kentucky. In 1816, the “Year without a Summer” was a destructive global event linked to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which many volcanologists regard as, “the largest and most-destructive volcanic event in recorded history.”
“This eruption had a global impact that devastated crops, created famine, spread deadly disease, and spurred massive movements of people throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, including Kentucky and the Lincoln homestead on Knob Creek,” Thurman said. “The examination of a historical global climate event provided a crucial beginning point in addressing the current impacts of climate change. The museum is committed to using the lessons from the past to help shape our decisions for the future.”
The students worked with Jason Zahrndt at UofL’s digital media suite in the Ekstrom Library to work on their videos for the class and project. The videos were released to the public this fall and can now be viewed here.
“My experience making educational videos for our community partners showed me that there are many intersections between the environment and how it can tell history itself,” said Mandala Gupta VerWiebe, humanities major. “Hodgenville's environment tells a story of change over time, which I specifically explored when discussing the agricultural history of the area.”
This project aligns with The Lincoln Museum’s goals, as it began as a local, grassroots effort to share Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky story and to reinvigorate a historic district in a rural community.
“Sharing the lessons of our community’s resilience and dedication to preserving local and national history is a rewarding experience in itself – and the students were extremely receptive to learning about our community’s history. Hopefully, we inspired students from a variety of public history backgrounds to find projects and passions of their own to champion and cultivate.”
Senior history major Nat Taylor’s video focuses on water and groundwater conservation and how both are impacted by global warming, specifically showing the effects in the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace site and Knob Creek.
“Through this project and class, I was able to use my passion for history and relate it to a topic that I had never tackled,” Taylor said “The whole experience helped me create something that I was proud of and allowed me to leave the class with a better understanding of climate change and its impact.”
Stacy Humphreys, Chief of Interpretation and Resource Management at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, said collaborations like these broaden their ability to provide engagement with valuable resources and history while applying modern knowledge.
“Specifically, collaboration with institutions of higher learning, such as the University of Louisville, provides students and faculty with hands-on research opportunities and allows them to consider the park’s associated cultural and natural resources and history, while applying their own knowledge to tackle modern subjects,” Humphreys states. “By incorporating these resources and history into the educational framework, we can create a more holistic understanding of our shared history and its ongoing relevance, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and informed society.”
Jamison will continue to connect students to the larger community to advance history and the humanities as a whole.
“I want to advocate for this type of work and community engaged projects,” Jamison said. “It’s a service to our community when we are able to collaborate with different partners, museums, parks, and archives, and it’s a great experience for the students. They come in with a lot of passion, they get to learn more about the subject, and they get to work with community partners outside of the classroom. It’s a great experience.”
