I have been so busy reforming the nation (during the Progressive Era) and then learning all the new dances of the 1920s (hat tip to Terra Schultz for help locating this video on the “Black Bottom”) that I haven’t been able to show our blog the attention she deserves. So I come to you in…
Ben Wright’s class is a great example of how to integrate (free) digital tools into a history class, I’m enjoying hearing about it and hope there’s more in store. On a related note, I recently had the change to run some workshops for history majors who were going to be using WordPress for course blogging…
This semester, I am experimenting with digital history pedagogy. FWIS 167 – The Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery, a writing intensive course, uses tools in the digital humanities to explore the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery. You can access the course website at riseandfallofslavery.wordpress.com. Each week the students post brief blog entries on the…
I have tried a couple of times to have students create blogs for the class, but never has it worked as effectively as Michael T. Pasquier’s class at http://religioninlouisiana.blogspot.com/ Here are some paragraphs from him describing the course and the website. Michael T. Pasquier “American Religions” is a 2000-level general education course at LSU. We’re reading The…
Just so everyone knows, we at this blog are vigorously against assault – and when a certain comedian recommends that certain people (men) videotape themselves assaulting other people (women) on camera, we say “NO!” And because of that, we are ending our relationship with that certain comedian.
Many thanks to Ed for the invitation to join this outstanding blog. Ed asked me to contribute after I shared with him my experiment in digital history pedagogy. This semester, I am teaching a small seminar for Rice University freshman on the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery. While this course is not a survey, and at…
Our next post in thinking about teaching the early colonial period comes from Adrian Chastain Weimer, another favorite scholar of this blog. Professor at Providence College, she is the author of the tremendous book Martyrs’ Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England. She, too, answers these questions: If you had to recommend one primary document (text,…
As we teach Reconstruction early in the semester (or do we all do it at the end of the semester now, as a couplet to the Civil War), most of us probably show the 1878 image of the South Carolina legislature, with all those African Americans considered Radicals (see left). I was stunned, then, by…
This spring, I’m teaching the second half of the U.S. history survey. We have 500 students, 8 teaching associates, and a whole bunch of new jokes I can’t wait to use. But before that, I wanted to go back to the beginning – at least of how we usually teach United States history. I asked…
Starting the US history survey feels a little like poor Phil Connor’s life, since I teach it every single semester. Except I’m never quite getting it right, so I try it again a little differently each time. There’s a certain sameness to the first day of class, of course – meeting new students who all…
