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| Book cover of Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution. |
For many, the most
immediate contact one has with history is in fiction. I'm currently solidifying
the syllabus for what will be my fall course, Fiction and the Historical
Imagination: Fictionalizing US History, 1620-1920. The course will focus on
some of the lingering mythologies of American history and the ways these are
explored in fiction. I've mentioned before my intention to use Hamilton as material for this class, even as
I've shifted the course theme a couple of times. Hamilton
emphasizes the centrality of the American Revolution to myths of American
history and identity while rearranging some of our ideas about what that big
moment looked like and who the players were. But for every history that's been
made into part of a founding myth, there are many that have rarely been
considered at all, let alone given a fictional treatment. In this post, I'll
explore the companion piece to the discussion of the American Revolution in my
course: an assignment which will ask students to create contrasting historical
fictions of 1776.
I didn't always
realize this assignment would involve a creative element. As a teaching
assistant at the Center for Talented Youth this summer, I watched my students
take on a variety of creative projects related to the theme of the course,
Politics and Film, all orchestrated by experienced instructor Jess Wilton. I
was pleasantly surprised at what they were able to accomplish in a limited
period of time, and on my return home I came to an epiphany-- In a course about the ways in which history
is fictionalized, where we will gather to talk about the responsibilities and
possibilities inherent in using fiction to make arguments about these
larger-than-life mythological pasts, why would we not take a moment to create
historical fictions of our own?
Our inquiry will use
Claudio Saunt's text West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776. This
great resource for expands the story of the American Revolution, providing an
engaging, complicated view of the year 1776 in disparate parts of what would
one day become the US. The book has many features of interest to discussions of
history and memory-- I particularly enjoyed the brief reflections on historical
memory at the beginning, in which the author notes that a giant cake he
remembered as part of the national bicentennial celebration turned out to be,
upon further research, actually related to a far more local event, the
bicentennial of the city of San Francisco (12-13).
I look forward to discussing with students this fall the ways our memories of
history are so eager to fit themselves into the most dominant narrative
touchstones.
One of the key
appeals of this text for this project is the way that Saunt uses stories of an
individual or group as a framing device for each chapter in order to
personalize his geographically far-flung story. The book links Russian projects
in Alaska, Spanish missions in California, and expeditions across the Great
Basin as inciters of and responses to one another; pieces in a variety of
efforts to control as much of the vast territory as possible. These broad
themes are made manageable by each chapter's focus on an individual or group
affected-- a group of seven Aleuts journeying on a Russian ship from Alaska to
Yakutsk; Diego, a in indigenous man imprisoned at a Spanish mission in southern
California-- who appear in the historical records but many details about whom
we-- and he-- can only guess.
This emphasis on
small stories of individuals makes it particularly well suited to students'
dabbling in making their own historically-informed fictions. Immediately, we've
got a few characters to play with when we begin thinking about how to transform
this history into a different kind of narrative. Perhaps more importantly,
Saunt proves himself willing to guess at possibilities and draw information out
of seemingly minor players in Eurocentric records and make them central to the
analytical and emotional crux of the argument. His transparency in doing so
gives students a blueprint for how they and other writers of historical fiction
can do the same.
Here's my lesson
plan for this project, based around our fifty minute class period three times
per week:
Day 0:
Divide
class into 4 groups. Each reads the introduction to Saunt's book and one
chapter from the first half of the book.
Day 1:
First
10 minutes of class: Group discussion on the introduction. What is Saunt's
mission in this book?
Last
40 min: Groups get together and discuss their chapter with one another.
1st
half: What happened in this chapter? Why is it important?
2nd
half: Begin brainstorming an outline or draft of a fictional take on the
history you've read.
Questions
to consider:
What
form should it take (Novel? Musical? Video game?)
What
is the genre? (Comedy? Drama? Horror?)
Who
are the characters?
What
is the plot?
Homework:
Create a draft or an outline of this fiction in consultation with your
group.
Day 2:
1st
10 min: Groups meet and tie up loose ends in the first version of their piece
(draft/outline).
2nd
20 min: Split groups and create new groups with mix of people from each group.
Compare
notes:
What
is your fiction about?
What
choices have you made about what to put in and what to exclude? How did you
determine this?
3rd
20 min: Regroup. What did you learn, and how can you use it in your fiction?
Homework:
Revise the draft/outline based on what you've learned. Distribute pieces to
class.
Day 3: Share with
one another.
1st
10 min: Quick 2 minute introductions to works from each group.
2nd
20 min: Exploring the drafts. Students will read, play, or otherwise examine
what other groups have created.
3rd
20 min: Sharing analysis of the works as a class.
Discussion
questions:
What
did you learn?
What
is the historical narrative?
What
is emphasized and what is downplayed from the chapter?
Some of the
challenges I anticipate with this plan relate to the relatively limited amount
of knowledge students will have about the chapters outside of the one they have
read, potentially making it difficult for them to evaluate other groups'
fictions. However, I also think that this serves as an opportunity to motivate
students to consider the fact that this is frequently the case in historical
fictions-- rarely are historians the intended audience for a historical film.
When developing their fictions, then, each group should be thinking about the
fact that they will be introducing a topic to an audience that doesn't have the
benefit of the exact knowledge they possess about it. I look forward to trying
out this lesson plan in less than two
months!
Do you have any
favorite resources on 1776 or historical fiction?
Related Links:
An episode of the podcast Ben Franklin's World, in which Saunt discusses the events depicted in his book.
A Chicago Tribune review of West of the Revolution.
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