We routinely offer courses on the transformative decades of US History. Departments place “The 1970s” or “The Eighties” in course catalogues, hoping these tidy chronologies will inspire enrollment. These deep dives are an efficient means of focusing our students on, say, Global Oil Shocks, Nixon’s machinations, or Ronald Reagan as a cultural icon. It…
Getting my students to complete the course readings is one of the biggest challenges I face as an instructor. I know that there are many debates about the effectiveness of a textbook, but I have found that most students feel comfortable with a text because it provides general information in chronological order that helps them…
Founding Friendships argues that friendships between elite men and women in the early American republic were more than possible—they were commonplace. These relationships exemplified key republican values of the era: choice, equality, freedom, and virtue. Men and women found affection, emotional and practical support, and political benefits from these friendships. The book begins with an…
Words, simply put, matter! The lexicon that we use to describe events or refer to individuals carry weight and meaning beyond what we may consider. On my blog, I have written about this topic numerous times. See, for example, “Our Linguistic Entanglements.” Lately, I’ve still been thinking about this topic, especially when I teach my…
“…the social world is always a part of the classroom, that classrooms themselves are social spaces and essentially microcosms of the world outside their wall. All learning, then, happens in a social context because we are learning with and from one another.” –Joshua R. Eyler, How Humans Learn, p. 66 In the above passage, Eyler…
At the beginning of each semester, I, like most others, spend some time evaluating my syllabus to assess if it meets the needs of my students. While over the years I have placed many assignments and activities on the chopping block, I continue to schedule a midterm and a final exam. When I first became…
Our students need to hear a historical perspective on the eighties, nineties, and aughts in order to understand the present moment in America.
*Author note: these are my prepared remarks (with some slight modifications) for a roundtable at the 2019 American Historical Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois entitled “The American Revolution in World History: A Teaching Roundtable.” For the last eighteen months I have worked as a social studies teacher in Highlands County, Florida as I researched…
During a recent session on the Dawes Act a student asked me how long American Indians had been in North America. I gave her the most honest answer I could. “Always.” I could tell this wasn’t what she was looking for. She was hoping instead for a longer diatribe speaking to Beringia, coastal routes, and…
[Originally posted on Process History on September 5, 2017.] Near the end of the spring semester, my department asked me to teach a summer session of U.S. History since 1865. I had a short time to think about what I’d teach and how I’d teach it. For me, it was important for students to “do” the work…
Historians of the American Civil War have authored an impressive and increasingly complex history of the common soldiers who waged the conflict. Explaining soldiers’ motivations to enlist, charting a steadfast commitment to their respective national causes, unfolding their multifaceted views on race and emancipation, and placing citizen-volunteers within their mid-nineteenth-century contexts, the rich scholarship on…
Derek Attig’s “Tips for Making the Most Out of Conferences” got me to thinking about what advice I would give to a humanities student or others on this topic. So, today, I want to briefly share some of the things I have learned over the last fifteen years about conferencing, and more importantly networking. This…
No, really.
“Ms. Cotton, writing my paper was actually interesting,” my student said, with an air of incredulity, as she entered my classroom for our final meeting of the term. “Well, that was the whole point,” was my reply. Students have become accustomed to viewing school as a “grind,” days of sitting in class, taking notes, cramming…
I can still recall sitting in an Honors World Literature I course as a sophomore in 2005. The course, which covered most literature from the ancient world until the 17th century, was one of my favorites in college. I loved the course partially because my professor seemed to genuinely care about the material being discussed…
