Who doesn’t venerate Martin Luther King Jr.? When I ask my students for their three favorite Americans, King is nearly always at the top of the list, besting Thomas Jefferson, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln. But I would argue that MLK’s consensus position as a member of the American pantheon has more to do with…
We are thrilled to have a guest post today from Ariane Liazos, Preceptor and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Writing Program. Ariane led a roundtable discussion at the AHA on the how we teach writing in undergraduate history courses. In the following post she summarizes the insightful conversation that ensued. At the January…
Several months ago, I wrote about the importance of teaching like we write, that is having class sessions with clear introductions and conclusions. I believe that the same logic extends to the way we think about a semester-long course. As I get ready to begin my courses next week, I am trying to think about…
Tis the season… to grade. But while the pile of essays to grade grows higher and higher, I’ve been distracting myself by planning for my next semester courses. I am thinking of pulling a dramatic audible and restructuring the assignments for the second half of my survey course. And I’d like to do so around…
I apologize for what may be the results of a tryptophan hangover, but I’d like to turn my disgust over Black Friday into a potentially useful discussion. The blogosphere has been filled with dozens of smart, helpful discussions of the history of Thanksgiving, but observers of popular culture, or at least popular media, might get the…
I still remember the feelings of whiplash. As an undergraduate double major in history and education, I struggled to reconcile the wildly different pedagogical styles of my respective fields. I am deeply grateful for the rigorous quality of my undergraduate history courses, but the methods employed therein could not have been more different from the…
The nervous chatter was loud; the silence was louder. I had four U.S. history survey students in my car on Wednesday evening driving back to campus after watching 12 Years a Slave. Some students were animatedly discussing the film, some were wiping tears, some appeared stoic, but all were affected. The movie is powerful, and…
My U.S. history survey class includes an exploration of different genres of historical presentation. The students are reading three autobiographies and then comparing them with works of academic, public, and popular history. In a recent post, I discussed the experience of comparing Cabeza de Vaca’s Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition with Andrés Reséndez’s A Land So Strange: The Epic…
Was America founded as a Christian nation? It’s a staple question for our the survey, and one that my students seem energized to discuss. I have never been able to squeeze John Fea’s excellent book into my syllabi, and until I find a way to do so, I have given up on covering all of…
Two weeks ago, Andy Lang shared with us his frustrations with getting students to engage in critical discussion. This Monday, Michael Hattem shared his experience with generating discussion in the classroom at The Junto, a group blog on early American history. Today, we revisit the topic with a guest post from Ronit Y. Stahl. Ronit…
