Ella: History may have its eye on us, but in Hamilton’s America, a hit fall-quarter history course here at Northwestern, students have their analytical eyes on Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit musical.
This trailblazing class uses songs from Hamilton as teaching materials on the early history of the United States. Here’s Professor Fitz with more details.
Fitz: Whenever I’m commenting on a specific part of the musical, I try to play it and, you know, then step back and say, OK, what does this get right? What’s accurate here, what’s it include, and what is it maybe not talking about or putting a spin on?
Ella: In the last 10 years, Hamilton has been praised for its seamless blend of hip-hop and history, becoming a pop-culture staple. However, students such as Freshman Michael Faherty have found that there are some aspects of Hamilton’s history that the musical didn’t necessarily get right.
Michael: We, in our readings, we kind of learn that people have had a lot of critiques over Hamilton and how it doesn’t portray slavery as much as it should. And we also talk about, you know, was Lin being entirely historically accurate? And we talk about, you know, feminism and all these, you know, critical commentaries of Hamilton. And what’s just been like the most unexpected thing for me is like I, I just thought everyone loved it and I didn’t really think about how, you know, there were other sides and other beliefs on the musical.
Before Lin-Manuel Miranda popularized the story of Hamilton, Ron Chernow, a historian and author, wrote a book revealing the history of the founding father. This book, titled Alexander Hamilton, became Miranda’s encyclopedia for all things Hamilton. In Hamilton’s America, students too read Chernow’s book to better understand the history. Then, they get to analyze the musical’s creative choices and Miranda’s unique interpretation of the revolutionary era in the classroom.
After reading Chernow’s book, Freshman Hailey Conroy has noticed that Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton has quite a few differences from the readings.
Hailey: So I think what’s interesting for me, or thought provoking I suppose, is seeing how there are some, kind of glaring incongruities in between those [sources]. And does it say something about the way, you know, Miranda is trying to portray Hamilton? Is it strategic? or you know stuff like that I think is really important and you can’t hold him to a complete historian’s perspective, but it’s interesting to kind of see the intersection of history and art I think for me.
Ella: After all of the reading and analyzing is over, singing, dancing and songwriting will take center stage. At the end of the quarter, students will get to create their own musical interpretations of Hamilton’s history.
Fitz: The more we think about the broader story of the revolution and the founding moment, the more we’re able to look at what we do see on stage in the musical as a set of choices that Lin-Manuel Miranda and the rest of the creators made.
And then we can start to envision what other choices might they have made, what other musicals or works of art might we be able to imagine, on the revolution and the founding era. And that’s actually one of the assignments for the class is to create what I think we call the Lost Hamilton track which is, students have the opportunity to write the lyrics to a song, or some of them even write the music to the song, that they think should have been included in the show, so they start to think about other ways that this story could have been told.
Michael: For like our final project, we have to write the forgotten song from Hamilton, so we have to, like make and record and I think for extra credit you could even perform it in front of the class for like your own Hamilton song, which, like, just sounds like so fun.
Ella: In the 10-year anniversary of the musical and soon-to-be 250th anniversary of the United States, Fitz believes this subject couldn’t be more relevant.
Fitz: I think we’re really looking at how our national past informs our national present and thinking, especially as we approach the nation’s 250th about why so many groups across the political spectrum are so interested in this founding moment and sometimes employ this founding moment for, you know, modern day ends. And so I’d really like students to come away with an appreciation of the difference between history and memory, so history being our methodologically informed evidence-based accounts of what happened and memory being the way that people today imagine the past.
For WNUR news, I’m Ella Alexander.
