H*****z

Officially a Master's in Social Science, all but one of my courses were in history. I participated in research seminars where I developed my research project, presented those developments to the class, and incorporated feedback. I also listened to others present their findings and gave written and oral feedback. My research covered slave literacy in the U.S. I mined slave narratives for information about literacy and took statistics from that information. I also synthesized scholarship about slave literacy to find evidence that no study could explain, which informed how I approached slave literacy. My work showed that enslaved people pursued literacy far less often but more successfully than scholarship has suggested, due to enslaved people viewing literacy more strategically and less idealistically than previous studies had conveyed. Most slaveholders verbally or physically discouraged slave literacy. This intimidated enslaved people but also conveyed that literacy was empowering, which pressured enslaved people to pursue literacy more, to the extent that doing so was safe.

At Berkeley, I majored in history. I took classes covering World, European, American, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Russian, and South African history. In addition to covering many regions, my coursework covered multiple skills regarding history. I learned primary source analysis from class assignments and how to skim and synthesize literature in reading seminars. I developed skill at quantitative research from a class on the history of quantification in American history, which had us use quantitative tools like Social Explorer and IPUMS. The class culminated in a quantitative based research project that we presented to the class.