I am a lecturer by nature, and will most often defend the lecture-based course over one dedicated solely to class discussion (seminars excluded, of course). I do, though, want to gauge opinion on the most effective ways to teach upper-division American history courses. I will begin teaching senior-level courses in the fall, and, although, I…
Last spring I read an interesting article by Ken Owen at The Junto blog on gaming the Revolutionary War as a classroom exercise. While this approach might be a little unconventional for most instructors, using a gaming exercise in an American history class is something I have always wanted to try. This semester, I have the opportunity…
After a year in gigantic United States history survey courses (500ish), I now have the chance to teach small research seminars (15ish). It’s nice to know their names, recognize who got their hair cut this week, and celebrate who recently got engaged. For me, one of the best elements of the smaller class is that…
It feels like ages since Jonathan Rees wrote about YouTube in the AHA’s Perspectives and felt compelled to address the question, “Isn’t YouTube for Teenagers?” (here and, revisiting the topic in 2011, here). It’s no longer particularly radical or innovative to integrate clips from YouTube, Vimeo, or other online video resources into lectures and discussions:…
As a first-time teacher of the American history survey, I’ll be contributing to the TUSH blog to share my experiences and cull some much needed advice from you veterans. I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rice University, examining how nineteenth-century African American women utilized the material and visual culture of their domestic lives to…
In the military, senior leaders use a telling phrase about young soldiers. “They don’t know what right looks like.” The job of senior leaders is to fix that problem. This is a post about undergraduates, research, and how to show them what”right” looks like. What does it take to teach undergraduates good research skills? Certainly,…
This week, the attention of the political blogosphere was captured by a provocative essay in The New Republic by the prominent historian Sean Wilentz, discussing the high profile leakers (or whistleblowers, depending on who is doing the reporting) Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald. Wilentz doesn’t come out and say whether he approves of…
Who doesn’t venerate Martin Luther King Jr.? When I ask my students for their three favorite Americans, King is nearly always at the top of the list, besting Thomas Jefferson, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln. But I would argue that MLK’s consensus position as a member of the American pantheon has more to do with…
We are thrilled to have a guest post today from Ariane Liazos, Preceptor and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Writing Program. Ariane led a roundtable discussion at the AHA on the how we teach writing in undergraduate history courses. In the following post she summarizes the insightful conversation that ensued. At the January…
If we subscribe to the old adage that students retain “10% of what they see, 30% to 40% of what they see and hear, and 90% of what they see, hear, and do,” we are doing a disservice to our students. Including kinesthetic activities enriches the classroom experience, helps students better retain content, and…
