How does blogging fit into your academic life on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? That was one of the framing questions that Joe had asked us to think about, and it was one that really got me thinking about the importance of accountability.  As professors, we are of course accountable to our students every time we walk…

The other day I was complaining to my dad about revising an essay I’ve been working on. It’s been one of those things that really shouldn’t take that long, but I have been having a hard time getting motivated and just doing the work. He laughed and reminded me of something James Michener had said…

In preparation for the Massachusetts Historical Society’s upcoming conference on the American Revolution, there have been some really great posts at the Junto and Historiann about the state of the field for the American Revolution.  I’ve been particularly interested in the discussion about labeling this era and field of study: do we call it “the…

The folks over at Junto are at it again with March Madness!  As a non-sports-fan at a major basketball university, this is always my favorite part of March.  If you aren’t already following the tournament (and voting), you really should do yourself a favor and check it out.  Every year this brings some more nerdy fun…

It’s that time of year again.  This semester I’m teaching my “Social Science Approaches to the American Past” and as I type today, my students are meeting in their small groups to prepare for their presentations next week on runaway slave advertisements.   I’m with Kelly on the value of group work from time to time. …

Happy Exam Week, everyone! I’ve been trying to get out from this pile of papers all week, so that I can be buried in blue books over the next few days.  This time of the semester is so intense for all of us, faculty and students, as we stand at the end of the course…

Earlier this semester, I started to notice an interesting trend in class discussions.  My students kept bringing up the bias, or lack thereof, of the authors we were discussing.  The term kept coming up again and again.  It was clear that when it comes to historians, my students wanted to hear from scholars without bias. …

This semester, I’ve been having my students in both of my courses (Colonial America and Women in American History through 1869) reading full books over the course of several weeks and then devoting an entire class session to discussion.  In my smaller Colonial course, this is pretty seamless, but the Women’s History class has thirty students.  Keeping…

This semester I am teaching colonial American history for the first time.  It’s a 300-level class, capped at 50 students, meeting twice a week. As I began planning my syllabus last year when I got the assignment, I was expecting it to be a lecture course.  But then I saw my enrollment numbers: only twelve…