I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Newberry Library last week. It was part of their NEH-sponsored program “Out of Many” program, which brought to the Newberry a collection of really fantastic community college teachers from across the nation who were looking to incorporate religion into their American survey or their…
by Nina McCune This summer has been a whirlwind – one rife with new ideas for various parts of the survey. Most recently, I’ve returned from Savannah, GA where I took part in a one-week National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks Workshop at the Georgia Historical Society. Throughout the week, we revisited themes of race…
I’m revising my textbook once again and I’m struck every time I do it that the chapter on Reconstruction appears in both Volume 1, designed for the first half of the survey, and volume 2, designed for the second. This time, I’m revising the book at the same time I’m freshening up my syllabus for…
I was reading Anthony Grafton’s review of Andrew Delbanco’s new book, College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, and was thinking about a question that constantly lurks in the back of my mind as I teach: What do I need my students to leave this class with? For example, one morning I read in…
As one of my students just put it, “Throughout American history there have been some themes have occurred.” Indeed. The final assignment that brought out this wonderful sentence was to assess whether or not the United States is more or less religious now that it has been in the past. The results have been fascinating.…
According to The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s e-zine that Newsweek bought, becoming a history major is the 12th worst choice a student can make. Of course, that’s based on this criteria: Unemployment, recent grad: 10.2 percentUnemployment, experienced grad: 5.8 percentEarnings, recent grad: $32,000Earnings, experienced grad: $54,000Projected growth, 2010-2020: +18 percentRelated occupation: Historian All that said,…
Followers of the blog may have read about my attempts to incorporate an “uncoverage” approach to my course in American religious history. Rather than bull through the material in typical survey style, I’ve structured the course in five chronologically progressing sections, with each section geared toward answering a single question. The idea was to get…
Okay, so slightly off topic, but one of the programs I’m involved in my day job is bringing Alasdair MacIntyre to campus this Tuesday, and I’m excited. He is, of course, one of the most famous philosophers in the Western world, and he’s been at the top of the field of ethics for four decades.…
Have you ever ranted at your students? Just flat-out told them they weren’t cutting it and needed to do better? Last week, as I was grading their third assignment, I realized that many of them weren’t improving in the way: (a) they should and (b) students in the past have done in this exact class.…
by Nina McCune There are parts of the American survey that are overwhelming. How is it possible to teach any major conflict (Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI or WWII, Vietnam) or even minor scuffles in one or two weeks? How is it possible to capture intellectual, social, cultural, environmental, economic, political, and/or military histories surrounding…
