History in Memoriam: Analyzing Obituaries to Learn Historical Context

Abstract

Understanding history involves being able to construct knowledge about the past from historical traces left behind. In this article, the author describes a five-step strategy using historical obituaries to recreate the social landscapes of the past and raise critical consciousness regarding power relations in different contexts. The strategy is designed to assist teachers in guiding students through the process of analyzing the language in an obituary, comparing and contrasting multiple obituaries, and then participating in a classwide discussion to critically assess the dominant norms, values, and expectations structuring the historical period under investigation. In the final step, students consider their present-day context and their future in light of their newly constructed knowledge about the past. The sample inquiry presented in this article centers around uncovering how gender and race are socially constructed in the late-nineteenth century. This strategy can be implemented in either middle or high school social studies classrooms.

Keywords:

• Historical context
• historical significance
• critical consciousness
• intersectionality

Acknowledgments

The idea for this article was inspired by the Library of Virginia’s (LVA) Document Bank of Virginia (DBVa) initiative to get primary sources into the classroom. The author would like to thank Catherine Fitzgerald Wyatt and Emma Ito with the Education and Outreach Department at the LVA for their support in creating this article. More information on DBVa can be found at http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/.