blog posts

Last week was the time to level with my methods course students. No, you won’t all get academic or teaching jobs, even if you wanted them. And let’s be honest: history learning happens in many settings that aren’t classrooms. Let’s…

In this last unit of the course, I’m hoping to expand my students’ sense of who “does” history. We’re looking at people who construct historical narratives, who make historical interpretations, and who profess history – people who work as historical…

For the last Historian’s Craft “sandbox” week we looked at visual images, particularly maps. This is because the HistoryMatters survey course has a terrific essay by David T. Stephens, “Making Sense of Maps,” with some online exercises (although a few…

Yesterday when I was driving home from campus I heard a radio piece on the global show “The World” about researchers in Antarctica who are taking ice cores and melting them to release the air bubbles so that they can…

Last week I conducted a workshop for Honors students called “Notetaking for the 21st Century” (if you’re interested, my “online handout” and Prezi are posted on my site). I began by reflecting on what research was like when I began…

We’re in the middle unit of the methods course, where each week is a different sandbox to play in. I have to admit, that sounds all well and good, but I can tell that my students are feeling a little…

This post is about serendipity. In the historical methods class, we’ve been using Williams, Historian’s Toolbox as our guide to methodology, and in his chapter on Sources, he discusses non-documentary historical evidence, including artifacts, archaeology, and genetic/forensic evidence. His case…

Our readings for this week in the Methods Course (History 411) nudged students to think about their own process of research and writing, with three complementary “how to” readings on writing history papers: a chapter from Robert C. Williams, The…

With apologies to Paul Simon for stealing his song title… I’m cross-posting from the Historian’s Craft website a post about our class discussion last week (Thurs 2/3) about the historical conundrum that John Brown poses – or any complex real…

This semester, I’m piloting a methods class in our department. Well, really, I’m kind of co-piloting it; after lots of departmental conversation and some rough planning last year, a colleague of mine wrote the first version of the syllabus and…