Courses Taught

I have taught this course since January 2008. The course covers the gradual evolution of the American political, economic, and social landscapes up to the close of Reconstruction in 1877. Some of the topics covered in the course center on broad themes like British colonization of the Americas, the American Revolution, the creation, ratification, and implementation of the Constitution, the rise of the American two-party political system, the Industrial Revolution, Manifest Destiny, slavery, sectionalism, and, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

I have taught this course since August 2008. The course covers American political, economic, and social history from 1877 to the present. Some of the major themes include developments in technology and the Second Industrial Revolution during the Gilded Age, labor relations and the rise of the United States as world power during the Progressive Era, and the massive upheavals of the twentieth century like World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.

I taught this course during the Spring 2021 semester and anticipate the course being offered on a regular rotation. The first third of the course focused on defining digital history, the second third introduced students to specific digital projects, and the last third of the course consisted of a hands-on digital mapping project in ArcGIS. Students were also introduced to 3-D photography, mapping programs, and other digital technologies historians use for research or for presentations.

This course was developed and taught during in Spring 2022. I anticipate the course being offered on a regular rotation. The first third of the course focused on the defining “public” history philosophically and the rest of the course focused on issues in public history, like historical representations of slavery and Native Americans. The course also included trips to public history sites with an eye to critiquing the history presented at each site and students independently visited a pre-approved site and critiqued the public presentation of history at the site.