Over the past few weeks, Rosie Click and Sareena Dubey interviewed three students about their summer experiences. The next three Footnote posts will feature those interviews; the first about teaching, the second about language learning, and the third about research. This interview features Georgetown History PhD students João Gabriel Rabello Sodré and Erica Lally, and MAGIC student Mallory Page, who talked to us about teaching over the summer in various capacities. 

Tell us about your summer!

João Gabriel Rabello Sodré: In Fall 2022, I applied to teach “Rio de Janeiro” in the Summer of 2023, as I had TAed for this class before and I am, in fact, from that city.  

Erica Lally: It was wonderful! It was just so much fun to be in the classroom. When I came back to school to do my PhD, I wanted to teach at the undergrad level, so it was just a really nice confirmation that this was the right field. [There were] 8 students, it was 5 weeks, 5 days a week, 90 minutes. I wasn’t sure the students would do the reading because it’s summer and it’s intensive, but they did–they really showed up for the class, which was fun!

Mallory Page: Over the summer I taught for the Georgetown Summer Discovery program through the School of Continuing Studies (SCS). 

How did you choose a subject/course? How did you develop your syllabus? 

EL: [I taught] The History of US Citizenship, and it really came out of my dissertation research. I’m looking at the surveillance of American citizens during the first World War by other citizens, and one thing that keeps coming up is who belongs in our community: who do we think is suspect and who do we think isn’t suspect. The group I’m studying often talks about it in terms of “100% Americanism.” So I was really interested in this concept of citizenship, belonging, and how we define it over the course of time. I developed the syllabus for my [comprehensive exams], so this was a chance to get to apply what I had created, which I recommend.

JGRS: My syllabus retained key pillars of Prof. Bryan McCann’s course. It included workshops for students to interpret visual items as historical sources, it considered cultural aspects of Brazilian history, such as music, and I opened the possibility for students to submit a final creative project in lieu of a written final paper. 

I was also concerned with the emergence of artificial intelligence and how students could misuse this technology. In lieu of [a midterm paper], I used Perusall, a Canvas add-on that allows students to collectively annotate texts. Each student had to post at least six comments to each assigned reading. The purpose of the assignment was to foster conversation, and not long, paper-like threads. My intent was to make things easier to digest, but also to curb AI use. Evaluations received today indicate that students really liked this assignment.

Because summer courses are condensed & intensive, I decided to follow some of my colleagues and assign a movie every Friday. To me, this also meant giving more representation to Brazil-related or Brazil-made film production. Films included difficult movies such as City of God and Police Killing, but also feel-good pieces such as animated film Rio. 

Workshops or labs are part of all History 099 courses. I had initially foreseen three workshops, covering paintings and photography. The syllabus stated these workshops would occur, but more specific instructions were given through prompts posted on the day of the workshop. Here’s a tip to those working on their first syllabi: you need to be specific, but you don’t need to be too specific. Prompts exist for a reason. Back to the workshops, during the course, I asked whether students would be interested in working on a fourth workshop, with pictures taken by Dr. Amanda De Lisio (York University/Canada) during the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. They unanimously agreed and Dr. De Lisio came to see us as a guest lecturer! Some students highlighted Professor De Lisio’s work & guest lecture as a highlight of the course. Dr. De Lisio’s presence hadn’t been planned, but I did write in the syllabus that it could be changed through the course.  This important clause allowed to tailor the syllabus to students’ interests as the course progressed.  Dr. De Lisio specializes in sport and many of my students were athletes, so they were particularly interested in large sports events and their social implications. 

MP: I taught a course on US Government and I was notified last minute, so I only had two weeks to prepare a syllabus…which was a new experience for me! I’ve never made a syllabus before so I began by following the format of syllabi from my previous professors and then I added my own ideas to it. It was really cool to see the other side of learning through orchestrating a plan for teaching. I also approached it from a very historical perspective, because of my years of training in history–my brain just processes ideas in that way. Since the course was only two weeks for each session, I settled on starting with the Constitutional Convention, talking a little bit about the Enlightenment and how it inspired the founding fathers, and then moved to studying the constitution in-depth from bill of rights through the amendments. If I were to do it again, I would probably include more about state governments versus Federal government. Plus, it’s important to be adaptable because I definitely changed parts of my syllabus on the fly depending on what interested my students the most. 

If you could give advice to graduate students earlier in the program about pursuing summer opportunities what would it be? 

JGRS: Don’t propose a course that hasn’t been taught at Georgetown before. The Summer School seems to prefer established courses, which have a good track of enrollment and success.  However, this doesn’t mean you can’t alter the syllabus and I believe courses taught by different [instructors] will never be the same. Also keep in mind that classes are smaller, which means you’ll have to consider this when creating assignments.  I had a significant number of students for a summer course – twelve – which means I could do group work easily. However, I did take a risk, as in a class with four or five students I would’ve had to change prompts a lot and maybe even give up group work.  If you’re planning on submitting a syllabus, make sure to consider this factor!

MP: Don’t be like me and wait until the last minute! It was [a] chance that I got the position, since it happened to be unfilled when I applied in the early summer. If you want to work through Georgetown, use HoyaWorks because they have tons of postings for teaching. Also, you don’t have to stay in your lane of history! I do Japanese history but I was trained in American history, so I was able to teach American Government successfully. It’s kind of fun to teach something that is not directly in your current concentration, and I also feel like it sharpened my skills as a historian. 

EL: There’s a tension about being purposeful and strategic about what you want to get out of the program and keeping your eye open for opportunities, but also knowing that whatever you end up doing, it will benefit and shape your career going forward. Even if a teaching job or a research opportunity falls through, working with people in any capacity hones your ability as a researcher, scholar, and educator. Keeping that tension in mind is the big advice I would give.

What’s your best memory/favorite thing about your experience/biggest takeaway? 

MP: One of my favorite experiences was learning from the final projects my students created. Their final project was to pick any social movement from the last 30 years and talk about how it started and what it became. I chose this project because thinking back to when I was a student that age, I was frustrated as I was starting to understand politics, but couldn’t fully participate or influence them. I wanted my students to be prepared to start thinking about themselves as a political being, and recognize that their thoughts and opinions matter. They got really creative and passionate! That was really nice to see and they picked so many different things that I didn’t even conceive of prior to creating this project. One standout example was a student’s heartfelt project on women in San Francisco fighting for recognition of East Asian comfort women in World War Two. It was really moving because the student was from San Francisco and had this personal connection with the material she was raising awareness on. 

JGRS: Showing students aspects of Latin American history and, particularly, Brazil’s history, that counter stereotypical/generalizing views of the region and the country.  Many students were not aware that Brazil has the largest Black population in the Americas. The way Latin America is portrayed in popular media and even in classes in the United States tends to diminish the role of Afro-Latin Americans as historical characters and to homogenize societies in the region.  Students were interested in understanding the role of the region and of Brazil in global capitalist flows & practices, from sugar economies to the rise of coffee and beyond.  In doing so, students also saw a facet of Brazil that differs from the glamorous and happy imaginaries of that country, built over the years by Carmen Miranda, Bossa Nova, and soccer.  While the three represent important cultural aspects of Brazil’s society, we also discussed problems of Black and Indigenous representation, democratic struggles, racism, erasure of Afro-Brazilians people from many spaces and histories, among other critical instances concerning the history of Brazil. 

EL: One of my favorite memories was this end-of-class exercise that I did with the students. A couple of the themes I kept reiterating throughout the semester [were] that change isn’t inevitable, change doesn’t move in one direction in terms of rights, and that individual actions matter. Those were big themes that we talked about over and over. At the end of class, I drew a timeline on the board and had the students get up and add events. At the top, they added things that had moved rights in a more inclusive direction and at the bottom, they added actions or events that had moved rights in a negative or exclusive direction. They were so excited and enthusiastic, and worked for about 20 minutes, consulting their notes and talking to each other. At the end, they had this beautiful timeline from 1776-2023, and we were able to draw the ups and downs of how rights had changed over time. It was just this really cool way to visualize what they had taken from the class in a short period of time. 

Image: Summer School Teaching Ideas, SplashLearn, June 20, 2023

João Gabriel Rabello Sodré: I am a PhD candidate in the history department, working on twentieth century Brazil. I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I obtained a Law degree (LL.B) from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in the second semester of 2011. As part of my legal training, I had two internships in the private sector, where I worked at a law firm and a multinational oil & gas company. In 2015, I became a civil servant at the Public Defender’s Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro, a body that provides free legal assistance to those in need. In 2017, I left my position in order to pursue a second MA degree in the United States. In 2019, I started my PhD program at Georgetown.

Erica Lally is a PhD Candidate in U.S. History at Georgetown, where her research focuses on the tensions between civil liberties and national security during wartime. Before Georgetown, Erica worked at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and completed a Fulbright Research Grant in Moscow, Russia. She holds a M.A. in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in International Studies from Dickinson College.

Mallory Page is the Social Media Director of The Footnote and a second-year Master of Arts student in Global and International History (MAGIC). She studies 18th and 19th century Japanese cartography and its ties to imperialism. In her free time, Mallory enjoys knitting sweaters and hanging with her cat, Mabel.