Pick Your Poison

As I was reading the material from the 1920s and thinking about “what’s missing” in Hist and Major Problems it dawned on me that when we teach about technological advances, we typically ignore one gigantic field: medicine. Hist mentions some prior advances, like the introduction of aspirin. But while we pay a lot of attention to the…

Roaring into the 20s

The Roaring 20s This may be the easiest, but worst developed, lecture I have. The argument is simple: “tired of reforming the nation and world, Americans turned inward to affluence, entertainment, and religious and racial fundamentalisms.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to the NAACP; it doesn’t apply to Jane Addams and her followers; it doesn’t…

How did they justify that?

I’ve always had kind of a schoolboy crush on Margaret Sanger. Maybe it was the topic of her life’s work that initially sparked the fire, maybe some of her fetching pictures. Either way, she’s one of a number of people in American history who make me blush a bit. She of course wasn’t perfect, but…

Belief in progress

The Progressive Era I’m not sure why, but the progressives always seem so boring to me. I know they’re not. Theodore Roosevelt was a ball of energy; Jane Addams was smart and savvy; World War I was horrendous; Upton Sinclair was hilarious; W. E. B. Du Bois was a genius. So why does the era…

“Be clear.” – Strunk and White

Writing Assignments I still remember my first paper as an undergraduate. I don’t recall the question or the topic (it was something in European history), but I remember getting it back from the TA. There was scribbling all over the sides. There were phrases I could not make out. The letters “PV” seemed everywhere. Then…

Bad, Bad America … But Then, Why Come?

Gilded Age Discussion Statue of Liberty in Paris Our discussion of the Gilded Age was fantastic. I put students into groups of 4 to 6 and explained to them that they were a family coming to the United States (or moving within it) during the Gilded Age. Where would you decide to move? Each group…