Teach My Book: Emily Conroy-Krutz’s, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic

Teaching United States History is excited to present Teach My Book, a series of posts where distinguished authors reflect on their work and how instructors might integrate their insights into the classroom. Our thoughts today come from Emily Conroy-Krutz, Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University, the author of Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in…

Run for the Fund

Welcome back to the new school year! Here at Michigan State, we’re making our way into the third week of the term and I’m trying to learn the names of my students. It promises to be a good semester, but there is also a sad absence. Regular readers of the blog might remember my post…

Should I Quote This?

And now the semester is over, and my methods course is over and done with. Another group of budding young historians is all ready for whatever research comes their way (I hope). This semester, I’ve been using my posts to talk about the progress of the course from its conception, how I teach footnotes, in-class research exercises, and…

In Which I Brag About My Students

This semester, I’ve been blogging on my undergrad methods seminar. In the past month since my last post, they’ve begun their research in earnest and our class sessions have turned into research time. If I haven’t been too busy with the class this past month, my students have been extremely busy. I’ve really enjoyed meeting…

Practicing Research in the Classroom

We’re at the halfway point now in my history methods course. At this point in the semester, we are still meeting twice weekly to go through a speedy survey of reform and radicalism in American history—the content side of the class—while also holding a few special sessions in the library. We’ve had sessions with librarians…

Fun with Footnotes

As I mentioned last month, I’m teaching a methods seminar this semester on reformers and radicals in US history and will be spending my posts this term talking about how to bring methods discussions into the classroom. Today, let’s talk about footnotes! So, I may have oversold myself on making footnotes fun in my methods…

Methods and Content

On Monday, I promised my students that I would make learning about footnotes fun. We’ll see if I can deliver. This semester I’m teaching a section of our Historical Methods and Skills course, HST 201. The way that we teach methods is to have multiple 20-person sections each semester, in which students write a 15-20…

Thomas Nast and the #NativismSyllabus

Over on Twitter, Michael Landis has started a new hashtag #NativismSyllabus. Go check it out, there’s some great stuff on there. One of the first things that comes to my mind when I think about Nativism is, of course, Thomas Nast. I’m on year three now of doing a Nast unit in my Integrative Studies…

Remembering David Bailey

Today I was going to write about how I took my students on a field trip last week (it went well). But I don’t want to write about that. My dear colleague and friend, David Bailey, passed away this past weekend. It feels like there is a hole in our department now, and we’re all…

The Ten Dollar Bill and Women’s History

Like Nora, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of putting a woman’s face on American currency. Last spring, the women on 20s campaign was an optional final paper topic in my Social Science in American History course. We had ended the semester on memory, and for the final exam students could choose between a few…