On a radio interview and History and Hollywood

Tomorrow around 4 pm, the students in this course will be live on the air at the University of Alabama's radio station, discussing the upcoming "world premiere" of their music video featuring music by Bible Study at 5:30 pm December 3 at Jemison Mansion (UA Art History Emeritus Dr. Robert Mellown will be our guest speaker). Check them out tomorrow if you can by visiting 90.7.

On other fronts...as the semester draws to a close, I thought I’d take one last opportunity to share with you some of the thoughts of the students enrolled in this class. While we are still concerned with emerging urban life in America during the nineteenth century, I have challenged them to see how some of the issues we’ve addressed have across-time resonances.

During  two class meetings in the past two weeks, I did as much by asking them to look at two motion pictures. One is the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals, which explores all of the great music that came out of one Alabama town as white and black bodies came together in a music studio, particularly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I’d earlier invited them to see  the 1991 film The Commitments as a means of continuing to explore the cross-fertilization of music and cultures, but this time with working class white Dublin, Ireland front and center. But given that we had just ended Martha Sandweiss’ study on Clarence King, a nineteenth century geologist who is best known for having mapped the West for the U.S. government than for having passed as “black” in order to marry an African American woman after the Civil War, I figured it might be worthwhile (and risky) to pick another film, maybe one that pushed us to think about nationality, urban life, labor and race, but also secrets.

The students took took the bait and watched the 1996 motion picture Secrets & Lies, which concerns a black British professional woman’s  discovery that her birth mom, a factory worker, who had earlier given her up for adoption was white.  In this case, London was in the backdrop. Her half-sister, also white, is a street sweeper.

Regarding all three movies, I was quite concerned about how the “city” functions in terms of how certain bodies come together and part and how ideas about nationality and race and even gender can teach us something we hadn’t thought about it earlier when we were solely concentrated on urban life in America before the turn of the century.

 No matter the quality of their participation, or whether they participated at all, I want to thank the students for being open to this exercise, which is the sort that might be more fitting for a graduate class. I think they did pretty good. See excerpts from their short reflections on the “History and Hollywood” hand-out below (I want to thank my colleague Jimmy Mixson for sharing all of these prompts, which he uses in his course on medieval history).

While continuing to think deeply about the urban space in a maturing America, they were pushed to consider how a movie captures via story lines music, lighting, setting, costume, dialogues some of the things we’ve discussed including urbanization, women in public spaces in an urbanizing world, class and racial politics. Here are excerpts from the students’ replies to Secrets & Lies:

Caroline: In Secrets & Lies, the role and struggles of women can be seen through the different narratives. One woman struggles to enjoy her mundane housework; another woman experiences personal shame of coming face to face with her decision to give up her child for adoption; one woman is shocked at the realization that her birth mother is in fact white; and another young woman with “unladylike” manners [is a street sweeper] and doesn’t have much motivation to broader her horizons. 

This movie’s plot correlates well with Clarence King’s story. It shows that it is in fact not unusual to have a white or black relatives without physically looking like it...Class differences can be seen in this film [and Muscle Shoals].   In Muscle Shoals, it is seen with successful city people come to a simple rural part of Alabama. In Secrets & Lies, it is seen in the different professions of the newly discovered sisters. While one sister is an optometrist, another is a [street sweeper].
Similarities between the mother of the two sister and Clarence King can be made. The mother had a dark past that she probably tried to hide from her family and King deceived Ada Copeland every day …in order to keep them  both safe.

Wayne: The mother [who gave away her child years earlier] lives in a lower class area of London….Her brother doesn’t visit often because his wife doesn’t like [his sister]…The [entire family] has issues….The only one who was able to face the consequences of their decision was the adopted child. The racial and social separation within one family all draw them together towards the end.

Voni : Shelter is a common way in which we see city values emerge. [It] narrates who can afford certain luxuries.

Devon: The lighting [in Secrets & Lies] is kind of dark, but I think that is because of English weather.

Jasmine: When the [social worker] asked the mixed [race] woman about her childhood, I felt like she [revealed] the fact that she was [in fact] mixed and how she [herself] felt about it.

Here are the students’ replies to Muscle Shoals:

Rae: I grew up mere miles ...from Muscle Shoals. I think we always expect[ed] this deep cultural/musical development from this area. I would love to know what influenced the great musicians to produce this music. Was it because of rural influences that so greatly differed from the rural space?... The [music] studio [has resonances with] the drive that we see in people in the urban space. This drive to develop something, to succeed, to survive and to be something different. This movie truly gives us a look at what the “common humanity” that music has …for an entire generation of artists. Music that flowed from Muscle Shoals was able to transcend race and class in the 60s and 70s in Alabama and the world…The filmmaker juxtaposed a vivid rural panorama with short clips of industry, transportation, technology and natural resources. [These things] helped drive urbanization in the nineteenth century and was influencing an area [that was] not so urban.

Caroline: In Muscle Shoals, many aspects of urbanization were depicted. We get to see how women in public, especially strong women like Etta James and Aretha Franklin, was more widely accepted and even admired [unlike in the nineteenth century]. These women had a major impact on the music industry…The relationships between the black and white musicians [was an] incredible improvement [from the past]. The artists didn’t let the struggle between their races get in the way of what they were trying to make…The filmmakers were very deliberate with their portrayals of Muscle Shoals. After a big name artist or producer would talk about their incredible soul and magic in the town, the filmmaker [chose] to depict the stillness and natural beauty of Muscle Shoals. I think this was done to display how ironic it must have been to those performers that a place like this could create such a phenomenon.

Jeff: The music that came from...Muscle Shoals [was] some of the greatest hits [and] should forever be considered some of the greatest music because it came from the heart....It was music that moved...millions around the world.

Wayne: The movie notes how soulful rivers seem to develop near rivers and "seems to come out of the mud." Musically, the film uses long, sorrowful guitar chords and also folk style music during interviews. Yet, the music highlighted in the film is funk, rock 'n roll and soul music. The rock 'n roll and soul music played an important role in urban areas because it allowed people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to develop a sense of unity [as they] became interested in new music. However, the music that helped urban [people] was produced in an area with high racial tension and by men who considered themselves to be "country folk."

Devon: The people who wanted to record  or play with the band from Muscle Shoals all expected them to be black. Everyone seemed to think that only certain types of people could play that type of music. However, everyone who worked there did so because of their passion for music.

Ben: I wished the film discussed what happened to Muscle Shoals as a music hub as not many hits come from it anymore. Was there an event or simply the change [in] popular culture away from funk and soul [that contributed to the decline]?

Jasmine: The scene showing the large bridges and dams as well as the big power plant and train shows urbanization in Muscle Shoals.

Finally, the students were also asked to share the unanswered questions that a particular film left them with and tell me whether they think film is an appropriate medium for teaching history (This issue is extremely important to me. I noticed when I used 1940s and 1950s films about America and even Europe's urban and frontier past in last year's class, the students with few exceptions - such as the time I showed  Bend of the River  starring James Stewart and Rock Hudson or Little Old New York starring Alice Daye - seemed bored. This time, more of them paid more attention as I cautiously used more recent films as teaching tools).

On the issue of whether film is an appropriate medium for teaching history, here's what some of them had to say:

Ben: I’d say [film] is a very good tool for anything from American history, music history or cultural history.

Emily: Films are never perfect. They don’t always apply perfectly to a lesson. They sometimes strive from accuracy for a good story.

Voni:  Film allows for a more interactive way of learning especially for visual learners. The disadvantages of film, like any media, that the creator has an objective they are trying to portray so we must extract the history from that.  

Undre: Film produces a teaching experience that can be interactive. This interactive lesson could come from pausing the video and discussing how it relates to the topic of the class. Disadvantages of using film could be that lesson valuable to the curriculum are over-kill [for]  students paying attention to the wrong elements of the movie. Another disadvantage can come from using non-biased films to teach a biased lesson.

Jasmine: The film [Muscle Shoals] is great for showing the emerging urban life in Alabama. It is a virtual time line not only covering music, but it also covers what is going on in the world outside of music (for example, the clip about Martin Luther King Jr. and clips of the segregation at the University of Alabama).

Wayne: I am a visual learner. I enjoy seeing images of urban areas and visually seeing personal expressions of racial and cultural situations....Muscle Shoals [in particular] is very useful as a medium for teaching history. Its advantages are that it is able to [present] American life outside the studio while also providing entertaining songs that most can sing along to...[The music] studio presented was a great example of the great [things] that can happen when open-mindness is allowed.

Rae: Film does a great job of illustrating history in a way textbooks can't. However, film can skew history or present it very one-sided. 

Jeff: [Film] is [an] appropriate medium because it is...entertaining. [But] sometimes it doesn't portray the entire history; just what [the filmmakers] want to show us.

Dr. Richard Megraw on baseball and the "nineteenth century city"

pondering the nineteenth century urban space via the daily newspaper

My own research relies partly on looking at nineteenth century newspapers.

In tomorrow's class we will look at the ways in which baseball and the "metropolitan press" contributed to emerging urban life. In light of last Saturday's field trip, which was canceled, Dr. Richard Megraw will join us to lead a discussion on the former.

I will draw on my own knowledge of the sport to make connections to the metropolitan press. To be sure, I will try to approach the lecture with new eyes. Indeed, I was a newspaper journalist for the better part of a decade, having started as a high school intern before working as a staff copy editor, reporter and assistant editor for three newspapers once owned by Knight-Ridder (now The McClatchy Company), a large chain once based in my hometown. By 2000, I could see the decline of daily newspapers with the public's growing attention to the Internet and left the company. After working as a freelancer for a bit, I applied to graduate school. Eleven years later, I'm teaching and have more time to tell a story as an academic.  I sometimes miss the adrenaline rush from running after after a good story. I miss, too, having a copy editor (So does my husband who once jokingly said - I hope - of one of my academic typescripts, "If I never see this again, it won't be too soon").

During my newspaper days, I had no knowledge of how newspapers contributed to nineteenth century urban dwellers sharing a "common humanity," as Gunther Barth writes. On the basis of my own research on the migration of freedwomen and children to Ohio, it certainly appears true. In the pages of archival newspapers I've seen hints of a rapidly changing world. Take for example,  Jourdan Anderson, a former enslaved man and Dayton, OH-resident whose 1865 letter to his former master was printed in the New York Daily Tribune. Apparently his master wanted him to return to the South after the Civil War and work for him. Anderson worried about the impact of such a move on his two daughters Milly and Jane. He wanted them to be safe from sexual abuse. Anderson also wanted back-pay from his earlier days of working as an enslaved person.

I recall, too, reading about Cincinnati white man of means who published a notice alerting area merchants that he'd no longer be paying the bills of his wayward wife; the African American domestic worker who avoided conversation with the abolitionists  knocking on the door of the house in which she worked, lest her employer hear her doing as much(these visitors were in search of signatures for their cause; she was trying to keep her job); and numerous newspaper advertisements for school books, which evidently unveiled the growing access to education some people had by mid-century. It is a topic that the students and I have discussed. I've seen, too, many advertisements from people in search of property in an increasingly crowded Cincinnati.


In the years leading to the Civil War, and prior to the formation of ghettoes, African Americans were by and large dispersed throughout Cincinnati’s white residents, among them, Irish and German immigrants fleeing a famine and a failed revolution in their homelands, respectively. Between 1840 and 1850, Cincinnati’s population increased from 46,338 to 115,434. It was third behind only New York and New Orleans in volume of commerce.

How do such individuals from varying backgrounds find the "common humanity" via the metropolitan press?  How do issues like entertainment, leisure and language figure into this conversation from the perspective of readers? How does honesty figure in from the perspective of newspaper businesssmen? What practical purposes did newspapers serve? The students should be curious about the answers to these questions and  come to class prepared to have a productive conversation on these and other issues.

birmingham and baseball: a case study

Birmingham(1919), Courtesy of Perry Castaneda Library

On Saturday, the students and I will travel with Dr. Richard Megraw of UA's American Studies Department to Birmingham's Rickwood Field. They should be prepared to think deeply about how Birmingham serves as a case study for analyzing baseball's role in emerging urban life. 

When and where do we see Americans entering ballparks? 

Yes, how does watching a baseball game help us find meaning in a changing world on and off the field during the nineteenth century? 

For historian Gunther Barth, baseball figures into emerging city culture between 1830 and 1910, give or take a decade. 

Is baseball just an athletic contest or does it have other lessons to teach us about competition in a modern world? 

How do referees seem to take the place of public officials and priests? 

And since people have been playing ball since antiquity, what's significant about what's happening by the middle of the nineteenth century? 

Is the Roman emperor really the same as baseball entrepreneurs? How does the story of baseball in Birmingham compare to baseball's emergence in, say, New York, St. Louis or Pittsburgh?

With all of things we've learned to date, among them topics addressing gender, race and ethnicity, I hope the students come prepared to ask and offer answers to these and other questions. 

Meanwhile, check out an interview with Dr. Megraw here.

Rickwood Field, circa 1920s

on the possibilities of seeing the "city" in a starring role

It is always interesting watching something old with new eyes. For example, tonight while channel surfing I saw a tribute to Michael Jackson's music on Fuse tv. The city seemed to have a starring role in several videos. For sure, city streets and/or subways are the backdrops for "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Thriller," hits that took Jackson to never-before-seen heights as a solo artist. The city is present, too, in "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal." 

Noticing as much made me wonder how the city functions in Jackson's videos. For example, would we even think of this space if we heard only the lyrics to some of these songs? What narratives does the urban space produce in these videos? Is the city we see an "American" one? And why does the city appear ever-green in some cases?  "Smooth Criminal" looks like it could be set in the 1920s,1930s or 1940s and even some future apocalyptic moment.  

I also wondered how the students would answer these questions  knowing what they now know about emerging urban life.  For example, "Billie Jean"  finds a bow-tie-wearing Jackson walking past a  store window on some anonymous city street. This brings to mind the arrival of ready-made clothing and department stores. This is a topic they will learn more about while reading Gunther Barth's study on emerging urban culture in the United States. They will learn about fashion, too, something that was important to Jackson, even in edgier videos like "Scream," which finds him and his sister Janet in a space ship with words like "recreation" in neon behind them. Indeed, they play different games, which are some metaphoric release from daily pressures.

Speaking of recreation, as mentioned, next week we turn to baseball, which also figured into emerging urban life in America. We will do as much by taking a tour of Rickwood Field with Dr. Richard Megraw from UA's Department of American Studies.

on minding your manners

 John F. Kasson takes on civility in everyday urban life.

The often uncivil comments on social media, news and other websites make many wonder, "When did people become so rude?" Gunther Barth tells us it is actually the other way around, particularly in an emerging urban America. For him, nineteenth century city-dwellers in the United States underwent a "civilizing process." 

No surprises here. The opening decades of the nineteenth century found many people encountering others whose personalities, politics and culture were quite different from their own. And in this space, as Barth says, a particular culture emerged. It did as much when a motley crew found new ways of coping with with one another.

Next week, we take up the issue of civility in urban America via a select reading from John F. Kasson's Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth Century Urban America. It's a perfect bridge to the following week's Barth reading. For sure, two weeks hence we will discover the ways Barth allows us to see how people learned restraint (often while still fighting) in baseball parks. At the time, spectator sports became a critical part of an urbanizing and industrializing America. Perhaps all of these ideas will crystallize when the students and I visit Rickwood Field in Birmingham and learn more about the history of baseball in America with Dr. Richard Megraw from UA's Department of American Studies. 

As a prelude to that trip - and Alabama playing Florida next Saturday (As a University of Miami grad and Miami-native, I'm especially looking forward to this game!) - we'll also pay some measure of attention to civility and sports.  That discussion requires a closer look at commoners and aristocrats in and outside the urban space.  From cockfighting, billiards and horse-racing to rowing and the beginnings of football in the land that will become these United States, we'll have much to think about. 

When do Americans begin to collectively learn the merits of self-discipline and emotional control and why is this still a work in progress here and elsewhere? How do capitalism, gender and class figure in, according to Kasson? How do we widen our scope of inquiry to include other differences like race, ethnicity and region?

serendipity reigns in clarksdale indeed

Bill Howell, the innkeeper at The Clark House, the nineteenth century structure  that I mentioned in my last blog entry, keeps a blog. In fact, he mentioned our visit to Clarksdale in his most recent entry. Click here to see how he makes me sound professorial! Thanks, Bill (and his wife Madge who I did not get to meet). On his blog, you will see me standing beside my aforementioned "dear friend" Francine Luckett, wife of Bill Luckett, the Mayor of Clarksdale. We met years ago when I was a journalist. By the way, Bill ends his blog entry by saying "serendipity reigns." I'd have to agree and it does as much over and over again. Fran is an Ole Miss Alum and we look forward to returning to Clarksdale (because there will be no hotel rooms in Oxford) when Alabama plays Ole Miss on October 4! Roll Tide! :)

Innkeeper Bill Howell, Fran and John Beeler, Alabama doctor-person

Me and Francine Luckett, First Lady of Clarksdale, MS

seeing modern day New York through nineteenth century eyes

Today I stumbled on a New York Times story about Duane Michals, a photographer who wanted to see modern day New York City through nineteenth century eyes. He did as much by gathering images of the city after-hours. The photos brought memories of my colleague Bart Elmore's own fascination with the tensions between electronica music and photographs of present day Tuscaloosa. If observed closely, numerous buildings that existed in Tuscaloosa during the nineteenth century feel very Old World because of their European-styled architecture. Elmore pushed the envelope on such aesthetics by creating a mash up of very modern music for the soundtrack of a short students enrolled in this class last fall produced with my assistance.

Back to the New York Times story though, I was particularly struck by this image of Coney Island by Michals. It reminded me of how leisurely moments figured into the arrival of urban life. In cities like New York, people increasingly worked a set number of hours in factories and had time to do such things as visit Coney Island. Numerous individuals began to travel to the Brooklyn park, which sits on the coast of the Atlantic. As early as  the 1830s and 1840s steamships and streetcars helped reduced travel time to this part of New York.

The park's first carousel was built in 1876. This tourist attraction became  less popular after the Second World War. I have only seen it once in my life. Upon moving to the city in 2000, I wanted to drive to Coney Island. My memory is faulty, but I mostly recall seeing Russian-owned businesses, gold jewelers and dollar stores.

Brooklyn's Coney Island, 1917. Perry Casteneda Library Map Collection. University of Texas-Austin.

 

 

Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City, a short film

We presented our short film, "Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City" today. Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society and University of Alabama graduate, spoke after the film was shown. You may see the entire short here. Enjoy.

a tapestry of voices tell a story about the past...

Here is a sound clip of me and the students trying to read the script for the short  "Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City." While you listen, check out this Bama sunset. As my colleague Bart Elmore edits the music and I edit the photography for this short, I look forward to seeing the students' final papers on an existing Tuscaloosa building that was built during the nineteenth century. The short will be shown at 4 pm, December 4, in Room 118, tenHoor Hall. In the meantime, Roll Tide!

on mixing music and history

My colleague, Dr. Bart Elmore, an environmental historian, has kindly offered to do the musical soundtrack for this class' short film, which will be shown at 4 pm December 4 in Room 118 of tenHoor Hall at the University of Alabama. One of his creative hobbies is spinning records. Pictured above is a YouTube clip of Air's La Femme D'Argent, one of the tunes Bart shared yesterday with me. He may use it in a "mashup" of other tunes under the short film, which will feature photography and text by students enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City" (HY 300) at the University of Alabama.

I look forward to seeing how Bart puts together the soundtrack. Meanwhile, please enjoy the footage in this video. It is fitting for our attention to the nineteenth century urban space, especially as it relates to transportation like street cars. I can't thank Bart enough for his support. I am sure the students will appreciate his contributions, too.

... it is difficult (even today) to think of Tuscaloosa, a town into which people come primarily for football games, as a city.

I have been tinkering with footage and images and text written and/or gathered by the students, me and my colleagues for the upcoming "world premiere" of our humble short film "Tuscaloosa, 'The Nineteenth Century'." The event will be held  at 4 pm December 4 in Room 118, tenHoor Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama. Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, will speak.

As an aside, the film is brought to you by "Room 118 Productions." Posted here are some of the photos that the students took of local buildings. The film will also have snippets of footage from urban spaces outside of Tuscaloosa. In this short clip, note how we kept what we have learned about the tensions between frontier life and the urban space in view. Another aside: the footage of the bridge at the beginning of this clip was taken last month when I was in Chicago attending a conference.

Meanwhile, it was wonderful hearing recently retired University of Alabama art historian Dr. Robert Mellown speak last week about his new book, as a presenter in the Alabama Center for the Book Lunchtime Speaker Series in Gorgas Library. Though I did not see a particular student in attendance, I was pleased to hear him say he needs to get to Gorgas and pick up Mellown's book as he - and the rest of the class - prepare to revise their final essays on local buildings. Their essays are a key inspiration behind the short film.

In our last in-class regular meeting, which will be held tomorrow, the students will discuss the first chapter of Jungle, Upton Sinclair's famous novel, and consider it alongside the late nineteenth century Second Industrial Revolution. They will see a short excerpt from PBS' Chicago: City of the Century documentary, which will push their thinking about Jungle. This reading is one of the ways we will prepare for this coming Sunday's field trip  to Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama. Sloss curator and historian Karen Utz will be one of our tour lecturers.  We are grateful for her support.

I look forward to hearing how the students synthesized everything they have learned to date after that visit to Sloss. They certainly did a great job of doing as much when we used an Bravo Channel Actor's Studio interview approach to simply ask one another about the significance of Gunther Barth's City People. May the synthesizing (and editing) continue.

On a final note, Roll Tide! I was able to get some footage from the festivities on Saturday when Alabama played LSU. It will be incorporated into the section of the film in which the viewer hears something along the lines of, "Granted it is difficult to think of Tuscaloosa, a town into which people come primarily for football games, as a city. But by the middle of the nineteenth century it was just that." As the film and our research makes clear, in the United States you need only 2,500 people to have a city and Tuscaloosa had as many as 4,500 before the state capital moved to Montgomery in 1845.

Americans..."we like to do whatever makes us happy even if that leaves us alone.”

Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Panhandle and Alabama.

The students did a fairly good job of comparing the lives of nineteenth century geologist Clarence King and Eliza Potter, a hairdresser who lived during the same century. Michael decided they were similarly challenged when it came to the issue of character. “Eliza was a horrible gossip,” Michael wrote, adding that “Clarence lived a double life.” He also detected how they both reflected the ways in which interracial relationships were a part of nineteenth century life. “Eliza Potter was a mixed race woman,” he said, and “Clarence King [was having] a relationship with an African American woman." His words in this regard resonate as my own research reveals the degree to which black-white unions occurred - forcibly or otherwise - throughout this century even though many white Americans generally saw people of color as being inferior. No matter their station or skin color, nineteenth century city dwellers like King and Potter battled loneliness, something Gunther Barth pointed out in his attention to nineteenth century urban culture. Indeed, Aaron noted how "both [individuals] seemed to be characterized by loneliness despite the fact that they were surrounded by people.” Added Evelyn, both “Clarence and Eliza…find themselves lonely” although for different reasons. King’s home was the “primeval forest” unlike Eliza who boasted about her house “in the heart of the city” of Cincinnati. Regan saw how both individuals “used their loneliness as [a] motivation to seek…adventures.” Said Anne Marie, they were “born travelers. They live[d] to tell the tales of their adventures over land and sea.” That said, A.J. rightly observed that Eliza had to be more careful than King because she was a woman of mixed race. Wrote A.J., “She went through some bad times, which she was either a part of or witnessed "[For example], she got off a boat in New Orleans, but [did not] stay long for fear of being sold into slavery.” Ultimately, both people, as Ryan wrote, “did whatever pleased and made them happy.” In this way, they captured “American life. We like to do whatever makes us happy even if that leaves us alone.”

While I was generally pleased with their responses, helping the students better synthesize all that has been learned this semester has been my biggest challenge. As they looked for meaning in the movements of King and Potter, it would have been great to see them invoke some of what  Barth teaches about nineteenth century American life.  As the semester ends, we turn to working collectively on our class video about buildings in Tuscaloosa. The idea is to find the nineteenth century “city” in Tuscaloosa’s history (and perhaps in Alabama's history. The above photo features the Gulf of Mexico, which touches the shores of Mobile, a critical southern and urban port in this state). Along the way, the students will be revising their essays about the building they randomly selected. It is my hope that they work harder to make connections between course readings and indeed outings – last week, they had a scavenger hunt at the Eugene Allen Smith Photography exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History; Anne Marie and Lewis finished first and with the most correct answers - and their own research.