Love Letters to the Next Generation

Historical Skill Projects- Final Project

“Love Letters to the Next Generation”

Throughout the semester, many of you reflected on the fact that this was the first time you were learning new material or that it was presented in a different way by adding complexity and nuance. Many of you were brave and honest in your responses and admitted you had never had to think in that way before or acknowledged that it might be something to think about in the first place because it did not directly affect you. You now will have the opportunity to add your voice to the historical record by writing a love letter to the next generation.

Letters or the written word is very powerful. As we move forward in this new digital and multi-media age, we are rapidly losing the art of letter writing. Journalist Catherine Field discusses this very issue, she writes about receiving letters from her mother-in-law:

Will this fading generation, I find myself quietly asking, also be the last to write letters? Messages crafted by hand rather than bits of binary code? Writing that carries emotions rather than emoticons? Letter-writing is among our most ancient of arts. Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain; on love letters written during the American Civil War, or letters written to a parent by a frightened soldier at the battlefront.

A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping. ..We have always liked to pore over the letters of great figures like Winston Churchill and Abigail Adams for the insight this offers into their lives: the writing, the crossings-out, the very feel of history on paper. Sitting here, savoring the imminent arrival of the next letter from my mother-in-law, I wonder what will be the legacy of the digital letter-writing age.

In her book, Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times, editor Carolina De Robertis explains the power of love letters in the public sphere. She writes in the introduction:

Why love letters?

The epistolary essay, or essay in letter form, has unique powers. A potent example, one that inspired this book, lies in the great James Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook – Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” published in The Fire Next Time in 1963 (the same year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned another seminal and brilliant epistolary essay, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”) Baldwin’s letter is addressed to his young nephew, and it gives voice to the injustices of institutional racism, the beauty and dignity of Black Life, and the need for social change. The tone is at once tender and analytical, impassioned, and nuanced, sweeping and deeply personal. Baldwin showed us that letter-essays, as a form, are perfectly situated to blend incisive political thought with intimate reflection, to fold them into a single embrace.

And that’s where the love comes in. Love is the blending agent that fuses the political and intimate, providing urgency to one and context to the other. In a letter, the thoughts at hand are undergirded by the need to connect with the intended recipient- and this spirt of extension beyond oneself can link social themes to our personal spheres, to what cuts the closest and matters most. It is love that pushes us to face the journey toward justice without flinching, love that impels us to keep going on the long, hard road, love that provides the moral compass and the map.

As for the work dissent, it entered this project as an expression of how these letters defend truth in the face of repression. As my exiled grandmother could have told you, it doesn’t take a dictator to create an atmosphere of fear and shut down freedom of speech. All it takes is a bully at the helm, using threats and intimidation against any journalist (or former Miss Universe, or Hamilton actor, or ordinary citizen) to raise the specter of silence and censorship. And so, in such a climate, we can either silence ourselves and live in fear or we can stand taller and speak. Dissent is verbal resistance. It is the affirmation of our voices, of our worth. It is, in a democracy, a fundamental right. And in fact, dissent is not unrelated to love. They are complementary forces. In a climate where bigotry is an explicit value of those in institutional power, speaking love is an act of dissent.”

Rationale of Assignment – Many of you have passionately discussed and wrote about the American past, present and future. You are all now given the opportunity to decide on your topic of discussion by writing “A Letter to the Next Generation.” With this project, you will be crafting a historical narrative in the form of a love letter to the next generation. You are now practicing historians. You will be demonstrating connections between the course materials and crafting a historical narrative through letter writing. It is now your time to add your voice and interpretation to the pages of history. This project is asking you to engage in the material differently in that you are the author or creator of this love letter that is based on a historical narrative (story) that you develop. You will need a beginning, middle and ending. You can approach crafting your narrative in a variety of ways. I would like you to carefully think about the themes we have discussed throughout the semester: community, race, gender, class, region, equality, freedom, justice, liberty, activism, hardship, determination, persistence, character, education, hope, religion, optimism, resilience, resistance and agitation. Then, I would like you to write a letter to the next generation. You can address the letter however you wish and also how you structure the letter is for you to decide (a public declaration, a manifesto or call to arms, a love letter or a private family letter). The overarching question or idea should be: What is your vision of America (to build the world anew) moving forward based on what we have learned and discussed in class? You need to incorporate specific examples (historical and current) into your letter. Your historical narrative should cover the whole of our class. Chronology and context matter – be sure to take both of them into account as you are crafting your letter. You should feel free to incorporate the work you have already done in this class. This project can easily become massive, so I am going to try to put some constraints on your historical narrative.

Step by Step Directions and Requirements

1. Figure out what format you would like to use in your love letter

2. Consider what vision and message you would like to convey to your audience (who is your audience?) You can either focus on a group of people or an idea/theme. For example, a vision (dream) could be of a more equitable American society for women. How has this struggle for equality and independence been fought, is being fought and your hope for the future?

3. What sources/evidence will support the message in your love letter to the next generation?

4. You will have to prioritize information here. This is not covering all that you learned in this class, rather one thread that mattered to you.

5. Your Love Letter to the Next Generation should include a mixture of artifacts. Artifacts can be primary and secondary sources, documents, images, maps, graphs, videos, songs, sections of podcasts, etc. If you add videos, songs, podcasts (please hyperlink them).

6. The historical narrative should include 3 to 4 primary sources (primary sources are artifacts that are created during the time period under study) from different time periods to support your interpretation.

7. In terms of length, you should be aiming for approximately 5 to 6 pages long (double spaced, 1 inch margin, 12 point font). Remember, you will be adding your images, primary sources and other artifacts right to your letter. For an example, think of how I construct the weekly “Framing the Historical Conversations” or the “Weekly Check Ins” with images, links, songs and text.

8. In your conclusion, please consider what your vision is for America and how it has been shaped by our history.

9. Cite your sources from the course materials in a Work Cited Page

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.