Friday, October 2, 2026 at 12:00 PM until 1:00 AMCentral Daylight Time UTC -05:00
Drawing from the research behind Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, this presentation examines what happens between encountering evidence and making a historical claim, and how that research process has shaped the classroom. Using the research on Ericka Huggins as a case study, the presentation explores how historians follow evidence across different kinds of sources, navigate gaps and contradictions, and determine what can and cannot be responsibly claimed about a historical subject. It then considers how these experiences have informed Phillips’s teaching, particularly how she helps students question sources, recognize silences and competing perspectives, work with uncertainty, and develop arguments that are well supported by the available evidence. Faculty participants will be invited to consider how similar research habits and interpretive practices might be adapted to their own disciplines and classrooms.