MTSU history professor cherishes experiential learning for students beyond classroom

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University history professor Martha Norkunas emphasizes hands-on learning opportunities for her students that allow them to take their classroom knowledge and apply it in a real-world context.

A professor of oral and public history, Norkunas received the Outstanding EXL Faculty Award in 2023 for her work in community-engaged history. The award is given annually to a faculty member with a distinguished service record in the EXL Scholars Program. In 2018, she was awarded a national award for teaching oral history by the Oral History Association.

Norkunas enjoys sharing her expertise with others in the academy throughout the country, such as earlier this spring when she was the Charles L. Wood Lecture Series speaker at Texas Tech University, a series similar to the MTSU History Department‘s Strickland Distinguished Scholar Program, a lecture series hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and previously coordinated by Norkunas.

At Texas Tech, Norkunas gave a keynote address titled “The Seven Rules of Community Engaged History,” and the following day was a guest at a brown bag luncheon with graduate students to talk about “Doing Public History.”

“I stressed the importance of doing projects with and for community groups. Building relationships with people in an array of different cultural communities is key to doing community-engaged scholarships,” she said.

***Dr. Martha Norkunas with MTSU Maymester 2023 graduate students on the Highline in New York City. (Submitted photo)***

Norkunas, who has been at the university since the fall of 2009, has provided MTSU students with several experiential learning opportunities and activities over the years that simply can’t be duplicated in a classroom setting.

In October, Norkunas met with Michael Pahn at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, in Washington to donate an extensive oral history collection to the Library of Congress: the African American Oral History Collection.

Middle Tennessee State University history professor Martha Norkunas, left, donates the African American Oral History Collection to Michael Pahn at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center in Washington in October 2023. (Submitted photo)

Graduate students at MTSU and the University of Texas at Austin had worked on the collection for 20 years. The collection includes interviews with 180 people of African descent from Texas and Tennessee.

“Their stories serve as a chronicle of how people lived through some of the significant changes in the 20^th century, such as school desegregation, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, and many other local and national events,” Norkunas said. “It was an honor for me and my graduate students to have this work accepted at the Library of Congress, where it will be made available to the public for years to come.”

Maymester in NYC ‘amazing opportunity’

In the spring of 2023, Norkunas launched an Urban Public History course in New York City for Maymester graduate students in Public History. Five graduate students, Shelbie David, AnnaLevi Chavis, Kayla Jenkins, Michael McCormick, Elizabeth Abram and Md Pervez Rahaman joined Norkunas and moved into the International House in the heart of Manhattan, where they did daily three-hour walking tours of the city and visited museums and historic sites, all facilitated by New York public historians and folklorists.

Tours included the Brooklyn Bridge, Women in Greenwich Village, LGBTQ History in Greenwich Village, the Bowery, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and the History of African Americans in Central Park. The group visited the African Burial Ground, the 9/11 Memorial, the New York National Museum of the American Indian, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Zoo, Ellis Island and the United Nations.

“They experienced a Greek Jewish festival and a Ukrainian festival, went to flea markets with goods from around the world, and sampled an array of cuisines,” Norkunas noted. “Students who had never been on a subway were, by the end of the trip, giving visitors directions.

The New School part-time assistant professor Hanna Griff, center, gives a tour of the Jewish Lower East Side in New York City to Middle Tennessee State University graduate students and MTSU history professor Martha Norkunas, back row center left, during an experiential learning trip to New York during Maymester 2023. (Submitted photo)

One afternoon, Rahaman gave the group a tour of Little Bangladesh in Queens.

The group also looked at art museums from a historical perspective as they toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

New York University adjunct professor and folklorist Kay Turner explains the COVID memorial in Brooklyn, New York, to Middle Tennessee State University graduate students on an experiential learning trip with MTSU history professor Martha Norkunas during Maymester 2023. (Submitted photo)

“The Maymester in New York City was an amazing opportunity where I was able to be immersed in the rich history and art galleries of a large city,” said Abram. “I had a wonderful experience and would strongly recommend everyone participate in an EXL class while at MTSU.”

“My experience during the New York Maymester class was one I will never forget,” said Chavis. “The opportunity to live in Manhattan and study the application of Public History in an urban setting opened my eyes to all the possibilities I have for my career path.”

For Norkunas, that makes such trips well worth it.

“In addition to the wealth of historical knowledge they gained and the insights into best practices in public history in one of the most dynamic cities in the nation, students made new friends from among the many graduate students staying at International House,” she said. “It was, as many of the students said, a life-changing experience.”

Middle Tennessee State University public history professor Martha Norkunas, back row far right, is shown with MTSU Maymester 2023 public history graduate students on Times Square during an experiential learning trip to New York City. (Submitted photo)

Norkunas followed up on her community-engaged history last fall by bringing graduate students to visit the atomic museums in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and meet with local peace advocates for a seminar she taught on “The Public History of War and Peace.”

This summer, Norkunas will travel to Paris to plan for an urban public history Maymester sometime in the future, and this fall, she will involve her graduate students in community-engaged projects with new Americans in Nashville.

MTSU’s Department of History offers a master’s and Ph.D. in Public History. Learn more at https://mtsu.edu/history/index.php.