Last semester, I offered an advanced seminar course on the ratification of the Constitution, thinking it would be a great way to delve deeply into the contentiousness surrounding the document with a small group of juniors and seniors. In keeping with my academic training, I took the problematic nature of the Constitution as a given,…
Generally, the United States history survey dedicates considerable time to World War II and its impact on American society. When the discussion turns to the Holocaust, it is a subject that my students intensely engage with, passionately decrying the bigotry and hatred that underscored the Nazi agenda. They frequently draw powerful connections to contemporary affairs,…
I love teaching the coming of the Civil War to survey classes. There are so many layers to explain about why and when the war happens. After a unit on antebellum culture, I take two class sessions to discuss the period between 1844 and 1860. The reading assignments are balanced between political speeches (this year…
Since the midterm, I have noticed that several of my students are continuing to struggle with primary sources. Of course, they know what primary sources are, and to a pretty good degree, how to extract information from such documents. Nevertheless, it is apparent that a great number simply prefer to deal with and to use primary sources one…
Earlier this semester, I started to notice an interesting trend in class discussions. My students kept bringing up the bias, or lack thereof, of the authors we were discussing. The term kept coming up again and again. It was clear that when it comes to historians, my students wanted to hear from scholars without bias. …
Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is coming, and the big box stores are pumping out Christmas tunes and sales galore. Meanwhile, our students are beginning to see the end of the semester. The pre-holiday distractions combined with the inevitable conclusion of the course often result in disengaged students. Some are thinking about family time and fun…
After fumbling and bumbling questions in my classes and failing to channel my inner Oprah and getting my students to just open up their intellectual inner landscapes to me, I started thinking about what makes good discussion questions. It occurred to me that the best questions are not the ones I ask students, but the…
I am constantly debating what kinds of sources to assign in my various courses, which ones to include, and, arguably more difficult, which ones to exclude. Yet this sometimes is one of the more enjoyable exercises in teaching. When making course syllabi, I tend to revisit books and articles that, as a graduate student, had…
I experience my life through music. When my father left, my adolescent afternoons were spent gripping his abandoned Tom T. Hall record. I listened to “Sneaky Snake” hundreds of times, perhaps trying to incarnate “a-gigglin’” and “a-kissin’” – even from a snake. Years later, with a girlfriend neither named Gina, nor one who worked the…
Last week Tara wrote a great post about balancing different historical narratives when assigning readings. This got me thinking about how to do the same in lecture. A lecture is supposed to provide a framework for students to make sense of readings and assignments, but there is danger in conflating the role of a lecture…
