Students will enter the role of public historians, investigate how founding-era conflicts connect to current challenges to birthright citizenship, identify who is affected, and frame evidence-based inquiry for later research and design work.

Students will investigate Revolutionary-era conflict, constitutional change, and competing ideas about rights, power, and belonging in order to build a historically grounded recommendation for how a museum or nonprofit should explain challenges to birthright citizenship.

Students will use their earlier research to design, prototype, test, and revise a public-history recommendation for a museum or nonprofit audience. They will translate founding-era evidence, constitutional principles, and user feedback into a clear exhibit concept and oral-defense pathway that helps explain current challenges to birthright citizenship.

Students will implement and test their public-history solutions with authentic users, collect evidence on how well their exhibit prototype and oral explanation help people understand birthright citizenship through Revolutionary-era conflict and constitutional change, and use that evidence to judge effectiveness and identify revisions before the final public presentation.

Students will present the impact of their public-history work for a museum or nonprofit audience by reflecting on how their historical understanding, civic reasoning, communication, and design decisions developed across the project and how their final recommendation on birthright citizenship can continue to inform public audiences in New York City.