Evolving Directions: Mitra Sharafi

Mitra Sharafi’s current research is a book project: Parsing Law: Zoroastrians and Litigation in Colonial South Asia, examining how the Parsi community used the colonial courts (such as related to matrimonial law) and the history of Parsi lawyers as intellectual and cultural “middlemen.”    Some interesting sources used were the magazine “Hindi Punch,”  the “India Office” archive in the BL, and “The Bombay High Court” in Mumbai.  There are few private papers of lawyers and judges, and newspapers are in poor condition.

In her teaching, Mitra Sharafi likes to use visual representations of information (like mnemonics).  She uses the Times digital archive in an assignment for her classes for undergrads, asking them to pick a particular phenomenon or event related to colonial law and find three articles.  These are used in a primary source paper.  Originally they had the option to use more sources, but she found that their skills were inadequate so it was too difficult (perhaps hindering the learning).  She also brings some front pages from the times into the class.  The Legal Studies program sets out to do something very different than what law school does, incorporating cultural sources, social sciences, and humanities.  They are also working to incorporate a more global focus to the program.     She likes to use primary sources that are accessible (i.e. digitized).  Last year she gave them the option of going to rare books, and only a few did it.  Google books is beginning to do amazing things in digitizing primary sources.

I would like to get a copy of the primary sources assignment, either from Mitra Sharafi or from the library liaison, Mary Rader.  This seems like an important model for meaningful research assignments for undergraduates because it gets away from the print/good vs. online/bad dichotomy.

Interdisciplinarity Teaching and Learning

I saw many library folk at the Third Annual Conference on Interdisciplinarity. I was able to attend most of the panel on Teaching and Learning this morning.

Aaron Brower opened by asking the big questions: “What if we were to start over and have a different kind of university? What would the educational experiences be? What would we want the students to know/be able to do?” He asked a question that John Wiley often asks in his talks: If students will be most productive 15 years after they graduate, what can we do now to prepare them for that moment in time, when, of course, things will be different than they are today? He mentioned that our definition of educational experiences might be about to change. He also mentioned that we will need to incorporate deeper technology experiences, and that people would have a much easier time accessing information, with Google rather than with card catalogs. This was an interesting note since Aaron is a big supporter of information literacy, so we’ll need to have more conversations on campus about what parts of information literacy will remain important if Google does become the de facto portal to information for most people. While the panel did not include a librarian, there was an effort to include faculty and academic staff to signal the increasing value of learning experiences outside the classroom to the educational experience that UW provides.

Panelist Jolanda Vanderval Taylor was charged to set the stage by introducing the LEAP outcomes. She suggested that we “let students in on the secret of what we are doing to them and with them” by sharing the outcomes and allowing students to document for themselves what they are doing. She noted that if students get the essential learning outcomes they will be prepared for the world of work/citizenship; the major they choose is really not important.