Last week, I looked at my syllabus randomly sometime after 3:00pm on the way out of the office having just finished a lecture on the Election of 1796 with my Tuesday-Thursday survey. I expected to see, next to the date of then-tomorrow’s class, something to the general effect of “The Federalist Era,” or maybe, if…
As one listens to John Coltrane’s “Central Park West,” one’s mind begins to wander to distant places. Personally, it brings me to a cold night, any cold night, ambling around the street of that same name, looking for life, peace, warmth, quiet, loneliness, happiness, those things that keep us all going in one way or…
We’ve all had them—ancient professors who dress poorly, haven’t shaved in between three and four lifetimes, get covered in chalk and don’t seem to notice or mind, and go through lectures with a clarity and calmness only possible after the thousandth iteration. This, it seems, is the image of the “Ivory Tower,” the “absent-minded professor,”…
I ended up in the clearly enviable situation of teaching, alongside my standard U.S. history load, two sections of Global History II this semester. Yes, that’s two sections covering the quick and unproductive time between 1500 and 2015…across the entire earth. This, my friends, to many, is the grizzle of the academic teaching world. But…
