How will I teach this course next time? What changes will I make? What worked? What flopped? These are the questions that all teachers must ask themselves. As “Witnessing the Sixties” draws to a close, I am reflecting on its second coming, which will occur in January 2020. Demonstrating growth and willingness to improve a…

In crafting assignments, we strive to help our students find depth of knowledge while allowing them to explore topics located off the beaten path. In my course, Witnessing the Sixties, students read classics like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and yet I also want them to encounter Sixties phenomena that are revelatory due to their…

  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…