Seeing Disability in U.S. History

Despite its exciting growth over the past couple of decades, disability history still gets relatively little little space in U.S. history textbooks.  This is a shame, in part because the work on disability reveals so much not just about the lives of the disabled, but also about the evolving politics and meaning of “normalcy” in…

The Science of Better Homework Assignments

Though I have long been fascinated (cautiously, though, I hope) by the potential for applying the mind sciences to the study of history, I have not given as much attention to new educational psychology research.  This week, however, I learned of a new Duke and Rice studythat suggests some easy but effective ways of designing…

Oppia

In the fall, I will most likely be teaching the survey online.  One of the difficult parts of teaching a a large lecture course online or onsite, when both time constraints and classroom size discourage discussion, is ensuring that students are doing and understanding the reading.  While some instructors prefer to simply wait for paper…

Grade Inflation

Now that we find ourselves between semesters, with bluebook piles marked up and cleared from our desks, I’d like to start a conversation on a topic about which everybody these days seems to have an opinion: grade inflation.  The topic comes up frequently in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the AHA’s Perspectives on History, and…

Teaching the History of Urban Space

I found Katie’s recent post on teaching material culture stimulating, in part because I am in the process of designing a course on the history of urban space in 19th-century Boston that will have its own material culture component, and looking for ideas and suggestions.  In my previous life as a journalist I wrote quite…

A Playlist for U.S. History Courses

Pretty much everyone I know who teaches U.S. history appreciates the value of exposing students to images as primary sources.  Not only can paintings, photographs, prints, and films sometimes communicate past events and attitudes more efficiently than textual sources, but students are often more confident about and interested in “reading” visual sources.  (Whether or not…

Teaching Uncle Tom’s Cabin

This week, I’ve decided to post my thoughts on teaching an important but challenging text.  I’m curious to know whether people have found other texts or approaches helpful, and also what approaches seem to work when two or more sessions can’t be devoted to the novel. In teaching Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)…