{"id":17216,"date":"2025-08-06T11:20:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=17216"},"modified":"2025-08-06T11:20:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:20:55","slug":"the-actualist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/summer-2025\/the-actualist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Actualist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Historian<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Historian Mack Scott \u201902 describes himself as an \u201cactualist.\u201d His varied research interests share a common thread\u2014mending ruptures in the fabric of dominant historical narratives through stories that have been neglected or erased. His goal is a more complete history\u2014one that strives to document what actually happened.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mack Scott III \u201902 didn\u2019t come to 溏心vlog免费B站 planning to teach.

After graduating from Chariho High School in Richmond, R.I., Scott came to 溏心vlog免费B站 on a football scholarship. He recalls appreciating history professor Robert Weisbord\u2019s African American history course, even if a comment from the professor rankled some of the other football players in the class.

\u201cIf you\u2019re at this school to play in the NFL,\u201d Weisbord told them, \u201cyou need to take your studies seriously.\u201d

\u201cWe were a little offended,\u201d Scott recalls, laughing.

Later, that advice proved prophetic. Scott suffered an injury and realized he needed to reevaluate his plans. \u201cI realized my college studies needed to be important,\u201d he says. \u201cThis work did matter.\u201d

Around that time, a conversation with Sharon Forleo \u201972, M.A. \u201994, who was then the assistant director of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Talent Development (TD) program, pointed him toward a new major: education.

\u201cMack had, and still has, a steady, thoughtful responsiveness to things,\u201d says Forleo, who retired from her position with TD in 2016. \u201cHe listened, and that’s an unusual youthful quality. Mack’s way of thinking and communicating is what led me to ask him about teaching.\u201d

Scott says Forleo\u2019s suggestion was a good one\u2014education was a great fit for him. He enjoyed the courses and practicum, as well as the other students in the program: \u201cI benefited as much from the students I was with as from my professors,\u201d he notes.

After graduating from 溏心vlog免费B站, Scott taught high school history in Connecticut and, later, Virginia, coaching football after the bell rang. He participated in a program that aimed to improve the teaching of history, offered in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University, which offered him an opportunity to pursue a graduate degree there. Despite the challenges of evening studies with a full-time job, Scott obtained his master\u2019s at VCU. He received his doctoral degree in history from Kansas State University in 2019.

Today, Scott is a historian at Brown University, though he describes himself as an \u201cactualist\u201d (as in, \u201cActually, this is what happened.\u201d). He directs Brown\u2019s new critical Native American and Indigenous studies undergraduate concentration and is a popular professor on campus\u2014students appreciate his warm teaching style, honed during his years as a high school teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Historian<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\u201c<\/span>It\u2019s important to offer a fuller sense of history, to describe what actually happened and not avoid the difficult parts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00ad\u2014Mack Scott III<\/strong> \u201902<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Scott also enjoys returning to 溏心vlog免费B站 to talk to students. Bobby Britto-Oliveira \u201906, M.S. \u201911, assistant director of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Multicultural Student Services Center, calls him an invaluable resource.

\u201cMy experience at 溏心vlog免费B站 was formative,\u201d Scott states. \u201cI arrived on campus believing I knew who I was and what I wanted from life. However, the lessons I learned and the relationships I cultivated on campus profoundly changed me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, Scott is working on a project that traces the Narragansett Nation from the pre-Colonial to the modern era. He has also taught and conducted research on African American and Black experience and history.

Scott is currently working on a project called Reimagining New England Histories: Historical Injustice, Sovereignty and Freedom. The online K\u201312 curriculum project and anthology focus on Black and Indigenous history in New England.

Scott says that many stories about the diverse history of the Dawnland\u2014the area known today as New England\u2014remain hidden, erased in the dominant historical narratives that students are taught. Reimagining New England lesson plan topics include murals and memory in Providence, people of color in the maritime world, and shifting narratives around Thanksgiving. Each lesson is adaptable and aligned to standards.

Scott says teachers may not feel prepared to teach this history if they don\u2019t possess Indigenous heritage or haven\u2019t taken classes in it. Presented at the 2024 National Council for the Social Studies conference in Boston, the Reimagining New England curriculum is available at no cost as a resource for educators anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe historical narrative that people are exposed to in school covers a lot of experiences, but there is more,\u201d Scott says. \u201cSometimes that narrative is not a cohesive one; there are ruptures in the fabric that can be easy to gloss over. It\u2019s important to offer a fuller sense of history, to describe what actually happened and not avoid the difficult parts.\u201d

\u201cHistory is about stories,\u201d he says. \u201cWe use them in education to teach people. What is great about being a classroom teacher is that you have to keep students engaged with stories. But you also have to make sure that what you\u2019re teaching matters. Students always want to know\u2014and you need to demonstrate\u2014why these stories matter today.\u201d

\u2014Kristen Curry \u201992<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTOS: SETH JACOBSON<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Access the Reimagining New England Histories K\u201312 curriculum guide at sites.brown.edu\/rnehk12\/<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historian Mack Scott \u201902 is working toward a more complete historical narrative, one that includes stories that have been previously neglected or erased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":17188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2025","architecture-changemakers-network","architecture-network"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17216"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17708,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17216\/revisions\/17708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}