A few weeks ago, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Denver, I had the opportunity to chair a session centered around rethinking History Ph.D. education. It was a great conversation, and the two panelists–both Ph.D. students doing some really remarkable work–powerfully articulated the ways in which we can expand some of…
Over winter break I reflected on my teaching and research, and resolved to do several daring things in my classrooms this coming semester (Socrative! Facebook LIVE! Games!) To this end, on January 13 and 14 I attended the 2017 Winter Conference: Venturesome Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century hosted by Reacting to the Past at the…
Once again this academic year, I face a strange teaching week; my 16 day January term course on the history of American holidays will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day today and examine the inauguration on Friday. When I realized months ago that these two holidays would fall In the same week, I was thrilled…
What differentiates learning outcomes at the survey and elective levels in American history courses? This semester I taught ONLY the U.S. survey. Next semester, I’m teaching the survey, a team-taught introductory American Studies/transnational course on Nazism and American culture and politics, and an upper level elective in U.S. Economic History (History of American Capitalism). As…
My four year old is oh-so-helpfully sitting beside me while I write this blog post. I told him I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about and he helpfully told me I should write about something “I really want to write.” Thanks kid. Mostly he is mad because he wants to type nonsense words…
Our last post in a series exploring how we bring research into the classroom comes from Nicholas E. Bonneau, a PhD candidate in history at the University of Notre Dame and the current Carpenter Fellow in Early American Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. A historian of religion,…
I wish it hadn’t taken a crisis of propaganda and misinformation to demonstrate the worth of our vocation to society at large, but here we are nonetheless.
Instructors who are interested in applying Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to history teaching in the classroom can do so through integrating web based activities. Classes designed in this way would consist of two components – a lecture and computer lab time. In providing students with an introduction to GIS and geospatial data, learning concepts involving…
So, this has certainly been a year. Almost unbelievably, it’s already December and the semester is quickly winding down. Soon, students and faculty will retreat to neutral corners for a month to try and get our wind back before the next round starts. At this point, it’s tempting to already start looking towards what comes next…
As they have for many teachers – including some on this blog here and here – the results of the presidential election have raised both old and new questions for me about teaching United States history. I taught two sections of U.S. History, 1865-present the morning after the election, still shell-shocked at the election of a man…
