Professor Biel's HIST 608: Enlightenment course challenged me to incorporate my knowledge from the other learning outcomes.  Every course and assignment from my graduate experience has in some way factored into my approach to my research for this course.  My research prospectus and final paper on enlightenment ideas of natural religion allowed me to achieve the fourth learning outcome of completing a high-quality research paper that is well written, argued and cited according to the Chicago Manual of Style. 

Beginning this course with no prior knowledge of the enlightenment forced me to make use of every research skill acquired in my master's program.  After an introduction to some topics from the enlightenment, I chose examine natural religion.  This was somewhat of an arbitrary decision and was not influenced by any pre-existing knowledge.  Professor Biel suggested David Hume who was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, as a starting point for my research.  Building upon my initial discoveries about Hume's influence during the enlightenment, I started consulting sources pertaining to other philosophers.

Once I began to encounter more primary and secondary sources pertaining to enlightenment opinions of natural religion, I had to extract pertinent historical information from heavily philosophical sources.  This was the most challenging part of my research process for this course. All of the sources I found yielded tremendous amounts of information but had to be interpreted historically.  During the early stages of my research I noticed my work meandering between history and philosophy.  This was a problem for maintaining continuity in my work and connecting it to my thesis.

After receiving some suggestions from Professor Biel, I was able to shift my focus slightly and still use much of the information I had already acquired.  This helped me move my research from a compare and contrast of enlightenment ideas to an examination of how natural religion was interpreted and used by philosophers. Without my completion of the other learning outcomes, I would not have been equipped to effectively conduct my research for this course. The challenges presented by this experience have prepared me for a museum career by consolidating the components of historical research in my work.