Bancroftiana, Number 121 Fall 2002: Scholars in the Making Graduate Student Instructors and History 101

Scholars in the Making
Graduate Student Instructors and History 101

Before graduating with a history major from Berkeley, students in the department face head-on the task of writing history when they take History 101, a required seminar on research and writing. Many students find themselves looking at primary sources within The Bancroft Library.

Students frequently describe these initial visits to Bancroft, generally their first time at any archive, as "intimidating," as did Kim Hogeland, who was researching interactions between Anglo-Americans, Mexican Californians, and Native Americans around the time of the gold rush. However, by the second visit she felt more comfortable and began to enjoy the experience.

The documents Hogeland consulted are about 150 years old, so she spent the majority of her time at the Bancroft perusing microfilm, "I have to say that I love the microfilm room. So secluded, quiet, dark, all alone up there at the top of the stairs. Despite the wear and tear on my eyes, I like looking at microfilm."

Ellen Berg, Graduate Student Instructor in the Department of History, helped undergraduates navigate Bancroft's diverse collections. Photo: Erica Nordmeier

When History 101 students do get the opportunity to examine actual documents, they find the experience especially exciting. Like Hogeland, Jung Yeon Judy Byun also used a lot of microfilm for her paper on the economic causes of Chinese exclusion, but she also got the chance to examine "some old handwritten pamphlets." She remarked that "it was cool to actually hold something that someone had written more than 100 years ago."

For these students, using Bancroft exposes them to the hard work necessary to produce an original piece of historical research, which at the time can seem "annoying and stressful." Byun remembers, "I used to be there all day recalling material, transcribing material, going through them on microfilm, etc. It was a long and painful task." Students sometimes find that additional equipment would help, like one student who realized by the end research that "a laptop would have really made my life easier." Regardless, as Byun says, "Looking back at my times at the Bancroft,...it was enjoyable."

Hogeland, who used gold rush letters, the Larkin papers, and "Documents on the Conquest of California," found she "really liked the documents on the conquest, tracing how events came to a head, seeing what the various officials were saying to each other. Being from the mid-1800s, the tone of the documents, even when expressing outrage, was pretty cordial and official."

The process of turning primary sources into a well-documented paper with a clear argument is both time-consuming and challenging. One student, studying land practices in an area of Mexico, found writing the paper very interesting, but "it was also stressful because oftentimes the sources did not lead me to the direction I had intended my paper to take."

Similarly, Joel Prudhomme, studying uses of the Mexican-American border by Mexicans, found that the process of exploring primary sources at Bancroft could be "frustrating and stressful when hours of work didn't produce any results and I saw the semester moving along quite rapidly while I seemed to be making no progress, or even going backwards." Luckily, he also experienced the positive side of research, the excitement of "sporadic and often euphoric encounters with sources" that helped him develop his argument.

Some of the students who use Bancroft to research their 101 papers consider a career in history. For example, Hogeland plans to take a year off from school and then begin graduate school to study history, focusing on the American West, while Prudhomme and Byun are both considering graduate study in history among their other options. The experience of using The Bancroft Library can influence this choice to pursue a career in history. For example, Kevin Adams is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department who studies the history of the American West. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, he used Bancroft for the first time while writing a History 101 paper on 1920s Cal students' political awareness. He says, "Doing work there encouraged me in my decision to attend grad school, because it showed me that I had the ability to do archival research and produce a competent paper."

Today, Adams says, "I encourage my undergraduates to use Bancroft's riches— it's easily accessible, open most of the day, and full of great collections, especially in my primary field, western history." By getting his students into Bancroft, they, too, have the opportunity to get "a real sense of what historians do." Prudhomme seconded this thought. He said that it was "really interesting to get a taste of what goes into the writing of all those books that I've been citing in my past papers."

Byun agrees on the importance of undergraduates using Bancroft: "I think all Berkeley students should use Bancroft at least once during their studies at Berkeley. When else will you get the chance to do so?"

Not all history majors are headed for careers in the field, but the experience of exploring the world of the professional historian first-hand is valuable nonetheless. Kristine Carter, who begins law school in the fall, used sources at Bancroft that helped her to examine Mark Twain's portrayal of the West Coast. She feels that it was "just unbelievable that I can use sources that scholars and historians use in their research and I'm only a history undergrad."

—Ellen L. Berg
Graduate Student Instructor, History 101