Andrea Foster was a pre-med student who participated in my WR 150 class, “Piracy of the Atlantic! History, Archaeology, and Pop Culture.” In this course, we examined the golden age of piracy (1500s–1750s) in the Atlantic from both a historical and a fictional perspective. Through a variety of readings, our class looked at contemporary, eighteenth-century accounts of marauders, reports of excavated shipwrecks and pirate “lairs,” and modern, pop-cultural representations of pirates. Although the course was unrelated to her major, Andrea was very engaged with every aspect of it and was especially excited about writing this paper.
The assignment asked the class to design and propose a new research project around an ongoing and controversial excavation of a pirate shipwreck off the coast of Cape Cod. Specifically, they had to identify a research question that had yet to be answered and argue how their proposed project would provide a solution. The goal of the paper was to give students practice finding research questions as well as to show them that writing a research proposal requires the same strategies as writing an academic argument. Andrea chose to propose a forensic study of the bones from the shipwreck and argued that such a project could reveal a wealth of information about pirate health and healthcare. She went above and beyond in her research for this paper, addressing counter arguments that I had never thought of (like her discussion of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and finding creative solutions to a complicated project. Her enthusiasm for the topic and the paper was apparent throughout the writing and editing process, and I think it is obvious in the final result. She clearly loved both the topic and the research and produced an exceptional paper.
— KATHRYN NESS
WR 150: Pirates of the Atlantic: History, Archaeology, and Pop Culture