Substitute Excursion Assignment

The following assignment is available to students who are unable to attend the trip to Plimoth Plantation—and it may conceivably be utilized for students who are unable to attend the trip to Walden and Lowell.

Visit the Boston campus of the Museum of African-American History (maah.org), located on Beacon Hill. Go on the self-guided Black Heritage walking tour—or call ahead to arrange a guided tour. Be sure to check out what’s on exhibit at both the Abiel Smith School and the African Meeting House.

If at all possible, arrange for classmates and/or CGS faculty to join you. You’ll find that this assignment is easier to accomplish if you can draw on other visitors’ reactions as well as your own.

Writing Prompt Drawing from what you hear at the various stops on this tour, write a 2-3 page paper making a persuasive case for why Team H should or should NOT add this site to its list of excursions in 2020. Be sure to make meaningful connections to material from the CGS courses in which you are enrolled. Document all quotations and information using MLA citations.

Address your argument to the current Team H faculty. This means you can talk about how a particular element of the museum ties in with a particular theme of Prof Rhodes’ class, for example. In tuning your argument, assume that in their deliberations Team H faculty are leaning in the direction opposite to the side of the argument that you take up. So, for example, if you think we should add this excursion, you should assume that we’re happy with our current excursions and disinclined to make a change—and vice-versa.