Over the past two years I’ve made the sharpest transitions in the way I approach the teaching of history. In my survey courses I’ve dispensed with the traditional textbook in place of individual secondary sources. I’ve also begun experimenting with Social Media applications as a way to broaden both the way my students communicate with [...]
Teaching
I guess this is now what passes for investigative journalism. I am willing to wager that you can find mistakes, oversights, inaccuracies, etc. in any large textbook, especially when it comes to more recent history. Part of the problem is that the publisher may not be able to issue new editions of a particular textbook [...]
More specifically, one of my readers recently asked the following: “[W]hat exactly is your end-goal/interest in how Confederate commemoration evolves and is acknowledged?” It’s a fair question. My response to it may help some people better understand how a boy from the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey ended up with an interest in the [...]
Imake my acting debut this year in our school’s student production of “The History Boys.” I’ve been given the role of headmaster. The story is set in a private school in England in the mid-1980s and follows a small group of history pupils who are preparing for their entrance exams for admission to Oxford and [...]
It’s that time of the year when I take a good hard look at how my classes are progressing or not progressing. For the past two years I’ve been experimenting with a new approach that replaces the standard textbook with different types of secondary sources such as biographies, social and political histories, etc. Overall, the [...]
There is an interesting article in today’s Washington Post on the place of Civil War statues in a changing Virginia political landscape. It’s a fairly balanced look at how these sites are interpreted by different constituencies and it directly addresses the connection between political power and how our public spaces are used to remember the [...]
I’ve been playing around with an elective idea on conspiracy theories in American history. It provides an opportunity to explore issues of epistemology in historical studies as well as the ease with which myth and outright lies can be disseminated and, in some cases, become part of our cultural lexicon. One of the projects that [...]
It’s comforting to be looking at an entire week off from school. Of course, I’ve got plenty to do, such as writing three entries for Encyclopedia Virginia as well as a bit of work on my Crater manuscript. As I mentioned last week, I will also be leading a discussion for around 25 teachers at [...]
