Dr. Donald Gagnon teaches HON 498 Crossing the Danger Water and recently led three field studies that were essential to student learning. Professor Gagnon writes, “All semester, we’ve been studying The Middle Passage, the central part of the Atlantic slave trade, in order to discover common phenomena and the centrality of its significance in African American culture. Students then are taking our study of The Middle Passage and applying their understanding to other historical enforced journeys, such as The Trail of Tears, The Great Migration, the Holocaust, and other such major events.”

Each field study provided multiple experiences that enriched students’ understanding of the course. In Hartford, students visited the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Museum. In New Haven, students attended a production of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at the Long Wharf Theater and viewed the Amistad exhibit at the New Haven Historical Society, along with a presentation by Victoria Meskill, of Friends of the Amistad. In New York, students visited the African Burial Ground and attended a screening of act two of the original Broadway production of Gem of the Ocean at Lincoln Center.

“The artwork, historical documents and materials, the play performance, and the visit to the African Burial Ground all opened up very personal connections in order to energize student awareness and understanding of the historical, cultural, and sociological contexts of the material—providing a fuller scope and deeper scope and more personal scope of the material that can be gotten in a standard classroom.”