Stories of Power and Diversity During COVID: Building an Online Exhibition with Primary Sources

This case study describes a one-credit course, offered as part of the University of Notre Dame’s 2021 online Winter Session, which brought students, from first year through graduate, together with primary sources from all three campus repositories: the Snite Museum of Art, the department of Rare Books & Special Collections, and the University Archives. The instructors, Rachel Bohlmann and Erika Hosselkus, curators in Rare Books and Special Collections at Notre Dame, developed the course, “Stories of Power and Diversity: Inside Museums, Archives, and Collecting,” around themes of diversity and inclusion in cultural repositories. They connected content, activities, and assessment to three broad outcomes. They asked students to:  critically examine and discuss issues related to collecting and exhibiting,  collaboratively create a single, group-curated online exhibition, and  engage in peer review and self-reflection related to the process of creating an online exhibition.