Online Archives and American Studies Pedagogy Abroad: A Case Study

This essay details specific approaches to using the Smithsonian Institution's digital archives as tools for teaching with primary resources in American Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies classrooms beyond the United States. The applications of these strategies are transferable across the humanities and social sciences. The article is based on my experience as a 2022-2023 "Teaching with Primary Resources" Fellow with the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, an experience of intensive collaboration on course and assignment design with Smithsonian archivists, archival pedagogy experts, and former and current fellows. The article reflects on and presents as models the archive-based syllabus and corresponding assignments that I created as open access educational resources for the fellowship's capstone deliverables. Through these discussions, I highlight the challenges and payoffs of using digital archives as teaching tools abroad, hoping to provide guidance and motivation for educators who may be considering whether, why, and how they might introduce digital archives into their own pedagogy.1