As a faculty member, I believe that one of my most important responsibilities, if not my primary duty, is my role as an educator. After all, teaching, revising courses, writing lectures, meeting with students, and grading papers occupies much of my time. In my capacity as a teacher, I reach and influence hundreds of people (sometimes in one semester alone). Because of this, I work hard to make history engaging and meaningful to a broad range of students. Although I use a number of tools to achieve this goal, I do this most often through an emphasis on history as a construction, through diversifying the narrative of history, and through encouraging students to “do” history with creative and original assignments.
Here, you will find a sample of my syllabi from past semesters, as well as samples of assignments I have used.
Here, you will find a sample of my syllabi from past semesters, as well as samples of assignments I have used.
Sample PROJECTS
HIS 2204: Story Map Assignment
In this course, students read, The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy Tyson, a book about the infamous 1955 lynching. For many, this atrocity solidified the view of Mississippi as a place of racial strife and hatred. However, Mississippi was part of a national story, consisting of a struggle for racial equality and a violent white supremacist backlash. This assignment attempts to understand the larger story of civil rights in the United States from 1920 to 1980. Each student chooses a state and researches civil rights events from the era in question, eventually making a digital story map (using Story Map JS) to reflect that state’s history. Each story map includes 7-10 events. Students should think about civil rights broadly, including milestones, protests, racial riots, massacres, or racially motivated killings, as well as events that detail the state’s history of discrimination or segregation. In addition to making the black civil rights movement into a more national story, students will also understand the broad coalition of civil rights movements in the country in the 20th century by incorporating women’s history, LGBT history, Chicano history, Asian American history, and Native American history. I have submitted three examples of excellent student work. These story maps discuss a brief history of race and civil rights in Iowa, Illinois, and Maine during the 20th century.
Here are three sample works:
HIS 1200: Song Analysis
In this course, students read Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend, which analyzes the evolution of the John Henry ballad throughout the twentieth century. With the Great Migration and then the Cold War, John Henry’s story and music came to mean something different to new generations of Americans. For this project, each student chooses one American song (written and recorded between 1900 and 1995) and, in a short blog post, explains the origins of the song and the way it was affected by or how it influenced the era in which it was created. This is a research project, and students use secondary sources (including at least one peer-reviewed work) to analyze their song, the primary document. They must also engage with other students in the song forum to discuss their songs. At the end, I compile a Spotify playlist and share this list with the class. Please enjoy this sample playlist as much as I have!
In this course, students read, The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy Tyson, a book about the infamous 1955 lynching. For many, this atrocity solidified the view of Mississippi as a place of racial strife and hatred. However, Mississippi was part of a national story, consisting of a struggle for racial equality and a violent white supremacist backlash. This assignment attempts to understand the larger story of civil rights in the United States from 1920 to 1980. Each student chooses a state and researches civil rights events from the era in question, eventually making a digital story map (using Story Map JS) to reflect that state’s history. Each story map includes 7-10 events. Students should think about civil rights broadly, including milestones, protests, racial riots, massacres, or racially motivated killings, as well as events that detail the state’s history of discrimination or segregation. In addition to making the black civil rights movement into a more national story, students will also understand the broad coalition of civil rights movements in the country in the 20th century by incorporating women’s history, LGBT history, Chicano history, Asian American history, and Native American history. I have submitted three examples of excellent student work. These story maps discuss a brief history of race and civil rights in Iowa, Illinois, and Maine during the 20th century.
Here are three sample works:
HIS 1200: Song Analysis
In this course, students read Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend, which analyzes the evolution of the John Henry ballad throughout the twentieth century. With the Great Migration and then the Cold War, John Henry’s story and music came to mean something different to new generations of Americans. For this project, each student chooses one American song (written and recorded between 1900 and 1995) and, in a short blog post, explains the origins of the song and the way it was affected by or how it influenced the era in which it was created. This is a research project, and students use secondary sources (including at least one peer-reviewed work) to analyze their song, the primary document. They must also engage with other students in the song forum to discuss their songs. At the end, I compile a Spotify playlist and share this list with the class. Please enjoy this sample playlist as much as I have!
