Department of Classical Studies
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"Humanities and the Community College: Lessons for Classical Studies"
Lauren Braun-Strumfels in Conversation with Kim Bowes
Since they first met in 2014 while Kim was Director of the American Academy in Rome and Lauren the inaugural recipient of the AAR-Community College Humanities Association Affiliated Fellowship, the two have been in dialogue about the future of the humanities and the purpose of the undergraduate classroom. Lauren has twice welcomed Kim to her campus, Raritan Valley Community College in central New Jersey, where they engaged colleagues on the question, do disciplines matter? On February 11, Lauren and Kim will again explore this question, and the role of the community college in supporting humanities education. How can higher education and community colleges in particular disrupt longstanding notions about what and how students learn? They will engage with current debates around the vitality and validity of humanities education, offering some lessons for classical studies drawn from their experiences.
Bio: Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History at Raritan Valley Community College. Lauren is a historian of US immigration policy with a special focus on Italian migration. In addition to her American Academy in Rome affiliated fellowship she was the 2020 Fulbright Professor at the University of Rome III before COVID forced her to return to the US after only two weeks. Recently she wrote about how she salvaged her research agenda and kept going after her award was unexpectedly cut short in Perspectives on History. Her writing focuses on how Italy shaped US immigration policy in the first decade of federal gatekeeping, the 1890s. She has a book manuscript under peer review and an article appearing in the journal Labor in March. From 2018-2020 she was the co-director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at RVCC. She has a long-standing interest, also evidenced through her publications and professional contributions, in collaborative international scholarship, intentionality in teaching and learning, and the future of the discipline of history.
Registration is required for Penn CLST colloquia this semester.
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