Syllabus

Class Notes

It’s a Monday night on campus, and as many students, faculty and staff head home for the evening, 17 students assemble in Candelaria Hall for McBeth’s Life History and Culture class. Each student focuses on writing a book about someone’s life story.

Brenda Schuch is taking McBeth’s class a second time. The first time, she wrote a book about her father, Joe D. Andrade; this time, she’s writing her mother’s life story.

Her father grew up on a family farm near Peckham, between LaSalle and Platteville in central Weld County, and he began working the farm as a child, along with his nine brothers and sisters. “I have a photo of my dad when he was 12 years old, out working the potato fields, and he was holding a 50-pound bag of potatoes on his shoulders.

“I had long talks with my father, getting to know him better, getting closer to him and learning about his life,” Schuch says. Her father died a little more than a year ago. “When I’m really missing him, I can read my book. It’s like spending time with him again.”

In this class, there are no exams or lectures. Students talk about how to interview their subjects and get their subject involved in telling their life story.

“It slows us down in the fast world of today,” McBeth says. “Away from the world governed by media, you sit together and talk for hours.”

When students finish interviews, they transcribe the recordings and write the story, typically about 100 pages. In the process, they learn firsthand how anthropologists research and capture stories and how those stories reflect culture and deepen understanding.

In a closet near her office, McBeth has hundreds of books written by her students. Most of them are 8½-by-11 sheets of paper in a spiral binder. Some are hundreds of pages, and many include photos of the loved ones. All are packed cover-to-cover with memories and lessons learned not only by the story subjects, but by the students as well.

–Mike Peters