Between midterms and various essays, I’ve been doing a lot of grading over the past month. By “a lot,” I mean enough to make banging my head against a brick wall seem like a not so bad way to unwind by comparison. (Someone remind me to never again turn down the offer of having my…
In honor of Super Tuesday several weeks ago, I held an impromptu mock election in my U.S. History survey. The topic was Woodrow Wilson’s World War I diplomacy and the election between Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, whose foreign policy we had discussed the week prior. Maybe it was simply a product of the emotionalism that…
Our post today comes from new contributor Dr. Kevin Gannon, who has his own excellent blog, The Tattooed Professor. This post was originally published November 14, 2015. If you watch sports regularly, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “East Coast Bias.” Teams from places New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, can seem to dominate…
When I was a kid, my favorite place to hang out was the library. In middle school and junior high I used to help the librarian (Hello, Mr. Wolford!) shelve books and set up displays. The library was my refuge. And the librarian was my friend. Jump ahead many years and I’m now a librarian.…
One of my students just observed that in my department, “I’m the technology guy.” Now, I’m certainly not a very sophisticated “technology person” but I do like to use digital tools in my classes. Over the past year I’ve had students make a digital database of sources (More on that here), listen to podcasts, create…
For quite some time I have been thinking about doing an overview of the different approaches taken to teaching the U.S. survey. But before I do that, I thought it might be prudent to take a survey of the different strategies in use out there and to gather thoughts on other approaches that I have…
I am teaching introductory digital humanities courses this spring at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Both courses have three goals. Students will engage in scholarly conversation on the key issues in the field. Students will learn to critically evaluate works of digital scholarship. Students produce a piece of original digital scholarship. We recently pivoted…
In history classrooms, there tends to be plenty of writing. Primary source anaylsis, historiography, thesis and interpretative arguments: each is a piece of disciplinary work that factors into most assignments we use. But given the constraints of chronology, whether it’s the sweep of the survey or the detail of an elective, devoting time to actually…
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…
“Do we really have to read all these sources?” When I first heard this now oft-repeated refrain, I wondered to myself if the students really do need to read the many primary and secondary sources I require for their Problems in American Life group meetings. Part of my hesitation stemmed from the fact that I…
