HIST 27
MinCo in Context: Coalition Building and Student Social Movements Since the 1960s Winter 2023

This is not the current course catalog

Are you curious about how MinCo (Minority Coalition) came into being at Williams College? Do you want to know how meeting minutes, handwritten signs, and oral histories can tell us about how students have built coalitions to pursue and achieve strategic goals in at-times hostile circumstances? Do you want to learn how the creation and flourishing of MinCo fits into a broader history of social movements within higher education? And what is a coalition, anyways? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then this class is for you! Through a hands-on approach focused on working with primary sources held in the special collections and college archives at Williams, this course invites students not only to learn about MinCo history, but also to do the work of public historians. Along with individual assignments in which students engage with archival sources and current scholarship, the final assignment will be team-produced public history projects that mobilize primary sources to tell a compelling history of coalition-building in MinCo history. The course meets 2 times per week for 3 hours each session, and will include a substantial amount of time conducting research in the college archives.