Agency, Counterfactuals, and “Utopias of Past Time”

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.—The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx…

Curiosity and Curtailing the Convenient Narrative

Few topics evoke such genuine intellectual curiosity amongst my overly achievement conscious students as the American Civil War. As a teacher, this proves fortunate, given that our study of the late antebellum period and war years typically falls after a ten-day break for the Thanksgiving holiday and before an eighteen-day winter vacation. As you might…

Reconsidering the Internet: Hypothesis in the History Classroom

There are countless different ways to write, and things and ideas to write about. And the Internet offers a kaleidoscope of different formats, media, tools, sights, and sounds to tell your stories…We’ve got to start thinking of the Internet as something more than a glow-in-the-dark newspaper.—Jon Bois, Sportstwriter for SBNation.com1)Jon Bois, “17776: Questions and Answers.”…