History Club
Every Wednesday at 6 p.m., PEA’s historians gather in instructor Kent McConnell's room to discuss, listen to and learn about history. From competing in History Bowl, a history-centric version of Quiz Bowl, writing essays for National History Day and listening to lectures about authoritarian dictators, students find themselves immersed in history unable to be found in just the classroom.
History Bowl is one of the primary focuses of History Club, with one team from Exeter recently qualifying for the national tournament. “A moderator will ask questions and we’ll have to figure out what even they’re talking about,” team member and lower Charlie Preston said. “We’ll all slap the table and try to get the right answer.”
Earlier this year, History Club traveled to Brown University on Feb. 23 to compete in the Rhode Island History Bee and Bowl Division. Upper Jason Huang won in the Varsity History Bee division, and the Exeter History Bowl Team placed as semifinalists. “That got us into nationals,” Preston said.
Co-head and senior Luca Cantone expressed his admiration for the students who had competed. “I’m not particularly good at History Bowl,” Cantone admired. “We are very lucky to have a number of students who have a very broad understanding of a broad knowledge of historical trivia.”
The club hopes to attend the National History Bee and Bowl from April 26 to April 28. Last year, the club was restrained by its financial resources. “Last year we qualified two teams to nationals. We weren’t able go,” co-head and upper Jason Huang said. “This year, we’re trying to secure the funding.”
A treasured part of History Club is the insight into unconventional historical areas through lectures. The past winter term, a lecture series by Mr. McConnell and the co-heads focused on “Authoritarian Dictators.”
Preston expressed his intrigue at a lecture given by co-head and senior Calvin Chai-Onn on Idi Amin. “Idi Amin was an authoritarian leader of Uganda, and he was just very, very strange,” Preston said. “He ended up living in a hotel in Saudi Arabia for the last few years of his life!”
Preston also appreciated the depth and contextualization he has learned from lectures. “Mr. McConnell once did a lecture on the Salem Witch trials, how widespread they really were,” Preston said. “He showed us a map of all the people that were accused. Now he has a course about that! Hopefully kids will sign up.”
Cantone also expressed that the enjoyment of lectures extends to delivering them as well. “I think part of our club’s role should be to teach interesting, off the beaten track sort of topics in history. I think the lecture series is effective in teaching these kinds of history,” he said. “I lectured on Indira Gandhi this year. The way I framed my talk on her was her position as an authoritarian leader in a democratic country and how quickly the norms of democracy eroded in India.”
Cantone believes learning about historical figures such as Gandhi is significant in observing the present. “I see parallels in that today, in our democratic norms being weakened by all sorts of forces- by corruption, by partisanship,” he said. “I think it’s important to look to history as I did in that talk and use history as a medicine for our own ills.”
Additionally, Huang noted the freedom history affords as a subject of study. “If there's one part of history that you don't find particularly interesting, you can always just move on to another period or other empire,” he said. “You don’t need to get stuck in like one section of history. It’s not like Math—if you get stuck in Calculus, then you're not going to be moving forward to abstract math.”
History Club’s passionate and dedicated members continue to inspire and draw Cantone’s admiration. “Even though so many of us take history classes here, I'm not sure many people would assume that history club would [exist],” he said. “The fact that we come together on a weekly basis or multiple times a week to share history and our love of history. I’m proud that we’re in a space where that’s possible.
The space of History Club has allowed Cantone to reflect on the themes of history as a whole, and what it means to study the subject. “I think the main lesson of history is a look at how humans behave and how we—you rise and revise when you fallen,” he said. “We’re capable of great things of advancing ourselves. History can be very inspiring to look at, to look at people in the past who’ve done amazing things and try to draw some from that for our own lives.”
Huang encourages all Exonians interested in learning more about history to try out the club. “You should join if you're curious about the world around you, about what factors shaped did it, or if you just want to have fun!”