Swarthmore offers many opportunities to continue learning outside the classroom, and even beyond campus. While for me, that has generally meant short trips into Philly or places in the nearby suburbs, some Swarthmore classes venture further afield—to NYC, Washington, DC or even Europe! This past semester, I went on a class trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC with my Holocaust history class.
The Holocaust course was the second history course that I’ve taken at Swat—the first being a freshman seminar called “The Global History of Science.” I will take this opportunity to tell you a little about First Year Seminars. They have a maximum of 12 students, all first-year students. The small size, without any intimidating upperclassmen, is intended to help students to feel more comfortable speaking up in class or tackling their first college writing assignment. Although the “Global History of Science” wasn’t really about the “history of science” as I was expecting, it was an interesting introduction to Swarthmore social science classes, looking at history from a totally different point of view than I had experienced in high school. Broadly, we examined how the global movements of people, ideas, technology, medicines, plants, and animals (especially invasive species), intersect with norms, beliefs, and misconceptions to create a complex web of interactions and consequences.
HIST 037: The Holocaust and the Problem of Genocide, was exactly what I was expecting from the title. We used an interdisciplinary approach—studying primary sources, historical scholarship, memoirs, poetry, painting, sculptures / architecture, and film—to explore the how and why of the Holocaust and its legacy. One weekend towards the end of the semester, the history department funded a class field trip to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, busing us down to Washington, DC and covering the cost of the museum tickets. We had the afternoon to explore the museum independently. I found it to be very impactful to be so immersed in the history— seeing artifacts, and hearing and reading stories that corroborated the materials we had encountered in class. I was especially drawn to the testimonial videos around the museum. Another highlight was spending time reflecting in the Hall of Remembrance. After a class filled with heavy, intellectual discussions of the Holocaust, it was important to me to contemplate the tremendous loss on a more visceral, emotional level. Overall, our trip added a valuable extra dimension to our classroom study of the Holocaust.
