Place-based learning
Goal is to help participants feel more rooted in city
Capital Community College students will have the chance to study American government, literature and art in local museums to bring those topics to life. The program aims to reconnect Hartford students with their city and state through “place-based” courses.
HARTFORD – Capital Community College students will have the chance to study American government, literature and art in spaces that bring those topics to life this fall. The college has again partnered with local museums for the classes and hopes to reconnect Hartford students with their city and state through this fall’s set of “placebased” courses.
Students will learn about American government at Connecticut’s Old State House, art history at the Wadsworth Atheneum and literature at the Mark Twain House and Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. The college has offered the government and literature courses for a few years, but this is the first time it will host a class at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Chair of Humanities Jeffery Partridge helped introduce these place-based courses to CCC five years ago with “Studies in American Literature” at the Twain and Stowe homes. He said the classes can remind students of the history that’s present in their own community.
“The students start taking a stronger interest in Hartford itself, and they seem to get a little more pride in the place where many of them are residents,” he said.
Partridge is also the director of the Hartford Heritage Project, which encourages CCC faculty to incorporate local resources and museum programs into their courses. His mission is to help students feel more rooted in Hartford by exposing them to the art and culture the city has to offer.
“If people have a sense of belonging, a sense of place, they’re more likely to invest in that place and to stay committed to that place and try to seek ways to make changes,” Partridge said.
Partridge will teach the American literature class with Katie Burton, program coordinator at the Harriett Beecher Stowe Center. This year the course will explore the lasting legacy of American slavery through the lens of Stowe’s abolitionist work.
“The course is student-led, and so much of what we do and what we talk about is based on what the students bring to the class, their experiences and what they want to know,” Burton said.
Burton said the class will relate cultural trends, including the anti-slavery movement, to Hartford’s literary history. She and Patridge agree on the benefits of having students read the authors’ work in the spaces where they lived and wrote.
“We’ve had students talk about how it brings the writers to life for them. It makes them real people to them,” Partridge said.
Students will also spend time in the halls of Connecticut’s Old State House learning about the history of American government. Rebecca Taber-Conover, head of public programs at the Old State House, said she is excited to share her passion for Connecticut history with students.
“Opening people’s eyes to the amazing things that happened here in Hartford is
important, as well as developing a sense of pride in our city and our state,” Taber-Conover said. “History didn’t just happen somewhere else. It happened here.”
The Old State House once contained all three branches of government, Taber- Conover said, which provides students the chance to consider the relationship between the three. She said students can learn about historic debates and legislation in the building’s restored legislative rooms.
At the Wadsworth Atheneum, students will learn about galleries’ and museums’ roles in shaping how art is interpreted, along with exploring the history of American art.
Angela Parker, docent and tour programs manager at the Wadsworth Atheneum, will co-teach the CCC course with Frank Mitchell from the museum’s Amistad Center for Art & Culture. She hopes students will consider how the museum presents its art, and how that presentation affects the art’s message.
“I hope that they’ll be able to have a more critical eye for American art history, but also be able to engage museums in a new way by allowing them to have a more critical view of how museums really shape stories,” Parker said.
Community members can now enroll in these classes through CCC, but all students must attend a New Student Registration Session to register for any courses. The fall semester begins Tuesday. More information on registration and deadlines is available on the college’s website.