This panel will share the results of a large-scale interdisciplinary project at the University of Pittsburgh aimed at developing and then making freely available teaching modules for humanities courses on guns and gun violence. The purpose of these teaching modules is to help teachers guide conversations with students about how the problem of guns and gun violence today is historically contingent: How have societal responses to guns changed over time and in response to the fluctuation of local, national, and global forces? Understanding how societies have grappled with these issues in the past equips students to tackle in a more informed manner the problem of gun violence today. The teaching modules have been developed in collaboration with leading specialists on topics of guns and gun violence within a range of disciplines. The four panelists, who are the co-organizers of the project, will use the session to introduce the open access online archive of materials and teaching modules.

The session will include a general presentation of the project. It will then introduce in detail four of the developed teaching modules and discuss how they can be integrated into a range of undergraduate courses. The first teaching module focuses on Jacques Callot’s series of prints, Les Grandes Misères de la guerre, which Callot produced in response to the Thirty Years’ War. This series contains some of the most graphic images of gun violence produced in early modern Europe. The second is on connections between early modern European arms manufacturing and the transatlantic slave trade. The third engages students in using digital tools to quantify and contextualize the presence (and absence) of guns in French plays published in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The fourth presentation introduces teaching resources that engage students with the history of firearm regulations in England, providing structured activities to help students find, read, and contextualize primary sources that sought to regulate guns. Finally, the panelists will discuss next steps for making the modules scalable for high school students, before opening up to a general discussion with the audience.