History Club is an organization of students with an interest in history. We have a partnership with the SF State History Department by which professors come to Lowell as guest lecturers to speak about their research. This offers us the opportunity to learn more about the historical method and primary source research as done by professionals, as well as to discover some of the more obscure stories and interpretations about the past. Lectures from the 2018-2019 school year included: the politics of marriage on the late 18th century Ivory Coast; political activism in Iraqi Kurdistan; Victor Arnautoff, a local communist artist whose New Deal murals at George Washington High School have created recent controversy; and William Rotch, a Quaker accused of spying and treason in multiple countries at the time of the American Revolution. In between guest lectures, we play historical Jeopardy and Taboo, and have presentations given by members of History Club on their own original research.
One of the projects we are working on for the 2019-2020 school year is expanded participation in National History Day. NHD is a history research competition held every year at the local, state, and national level, in which students do original primary source research on a topic of their choice based on the contest’s theme, which for 2020 is Breaking Barriers in History. Members of History Club are invited to participate in the competition, and have support in their research from teachers and past participants in the competition. NHD-CA: https://www.nhdca.org/ NHD: https://www.nhd.org/breaking-barriers-history
Club Officers President: Hadiqah Syed Vice President: Walker Whalen Treasurer: Mella Bettag Secretary: Michelle Plotitsa Public Relations: Ileana Zuckerman National History Day Coordinator: Anhai Roantree Historian: Simone Herko Felton