Transitional justice refers to the variety of legal, political, and social processes that occur as a society rebuilds after war; it includes war crimes trials, truth commissions, and the creation of memorials. Although the term "transitional justice" is a recent one, the philosophical issues contained within it are at the core of political philosophy.

In this service learning course, students did hands-on history by uncovering, preserving, and sharing Middletown's rich African American past. We focused on the history of the Beman Triangle. This African American neighborhood, now part of Wesleyan's campus, served as a regional and national antislavery and Underground Railroad center and home to one of the nation's first handful of independent Black churches. Students partnered with local archives, libraries, and museums to help preserve and share this neighborhood's remarkable history. Our projects included building a website and an exhibit to share this history with the Wesleyan and Middletown communities.

This course examined how history operates outside of the classroom and the ivory towers of academia. It introduced students to the history, ideas, and best practices that shape the world of public history.

This course introduced an interdisciplinary study of the idea of evidence in connection to the modern development of archives, museums, and prisons by setting it in a contemporary dialog with discourses on state violence, incarceration, and refugeetude. This course first established historical and theoretical connections between carcerality, Western archival record-keeping practices (e.g., scientific grids, mugshots, taxonomies, and forms of surveillance), and museological frameworks developed during the transition from the 19th to the 20th century.

During this seminar, we developed a digital group project that addressed the question of remembering and denying pasts through the historical and critical relationships between carcerality, race, and storytelling in Connecticut.