"Some historians say that to focus on the personality of a famous figure is to neglect the context in which he/she lived. My argument is that personality provides a way to attract students to history because it allows them to make a personal connection to the past." - Joe Illick
Presidents, Poems on Display in IGS Library
Explaining politics to the public is one of the goals of the IGS Library, and this fall the library is using an unusual method: a collection of woodcuts and rhymes that chronicles American history through the lives of the presidents.
Both the carvings and the poetry were created by retired San Francisco State Professor Joe Illick, who taught history at the school for 39 years.
"As I worked on each woodcut, I also wrote short verses that described the essence of the man and his times," Illick says on his website. "My object was to be informative in a lighter way in an attempt to make history appealing to a broader audience than it usually receives."
Source: UC Berkeley - IGS Public Affairs Reports [Complete PDF]