Objectives in the Classroom
In my courses, students can expect to:
- Gain hands-on experience working with and interpreting a variety of primary and secondary sources
- Develop an understanding of the current trends and issues in recent scholarship
- Learn how to craft strong research questions, mobilize sources to produce an argument in both discussion and written work, and develop the ability to see the world from the perspective of other people in the past and present
- Make their own assessments based on evidence in conversation with scholarly interpretations
- Apply historical knowledge and interpretation to contextualize the present
- Develop strong writing and communication skills to be able to communicate academic ideas in written and verbal form
Courses Taught
I teach this lecture-based course every fall semester at CCNY. An introduction to the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, my goal in HIST 32400 is to give students an understanding of the world that produced the Civil War, the dynamics of the war itself, and the world the Civil War made during the Reconstruction era. In exploring the history of these two important eras in American history, students also reflect on the power of this history in the present day and the ongoing contests over its interpretation and meaning. Core topics include sectional crisis in an era of antebellum expansion, slavery and emancipation as political and personal realities, and Reconstruction conflicts over the new status of freedpeople in the South and the future of alternative sovereignties in the West.
I teach this lecture-based course every spring semester at CCNY, where it is the only course that primarily focuses on Indigenous history. As such, the class provides an introduction to major themes and historical developments in Native American history. It is designed around the premise that you cannot understand United States history without Indigenous peoples and that Native history is American history. The course therefore focuses on the interrelated histories of Native American nations and the United States and examines the changing nature of U.S. political relations with sovereign Native nations. Students also gain exposure to scholarly debates about how Native American history is presented and understood and become familiar with common popular misunderstandings or myths about Native American people and history and why they are wrong. Finally, to emphasize the continued presence of Native nations and people, the course pairs the Native American history its covers with current issues in Indian Country today to reveal their historical roots. Each week has a historical and current issue theme.
I first taught this master's course in the spring of 2022 and am teaching it again in the fall of 2023. This graduate seminar critically examines the presence, meaning, and significance of violence on American soil from the colonial period to the present, drawing on an emerging historical literature that not only studies historical violence but, more importantly, uses violence as a key framework for historical analysis.
It asks students to grapple with the following questions: What is the place of violence in American history? In what ways do the stories Americans tell about themselves celebrate or erase violent action? Course readings and subject matter intersect with histories of race, gender, imperialism, memory, and trauma. Assigned texts include Ned Blackhawk's Violence Over the Land, Sowande' M. Mustakeem's Slavery at Sea, Joanne Freeman's The Field of Blood, Kidada Williams' I Saw Death Coming, Scott Reynolds Nelson's Steel Drivin' Man, David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon, Estelle Freedman's Redefining Rape, Charles E. Cobb Jr.'s This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, & Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home.
It asks students to grapple with the following questions: What is the place of violence in American history? In what ways do the stories Americans tell about themselves celebrate or erase violent action? Course readings and subject matter intersect with histories of race, gender, imperialism, memory, and trauma. Assigned texts include Ned Blackhawk's Violence Over the Land, Sowande' M. Mustakeem's Slavery at Sea, Joanne Freeman's The Field of Blood, Kidada Williams' I Saw Death Coming, Scott Reynolds Nelson's Steel Drivin' Man, David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon, Estelle Freedman's Redefining Rape, Charles E. Cobb Jr.'s This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, & Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home.
This course, which is required for all CCNY history majors, offers a hands-on introduction to the principles of historical research, writing, and analysis. Through a series of focused readings and writing assignments, students develop reading, writing, research, and critical thinking skills that are essential to the historian’s craft, and are applicable in many other disciplines and professions. Learning to think historically will also provide students with habits of mind essential to contextualizing current events—skills that are necessary to the responsibilities of citizenship and active participation in their communities and beyond. To focus our discussions and exercises on the historical method, this course centers on a single topic—the 19th century American West. But the course is not about the American West. Rather, we will examine the methodologies and perspectives that previous historians have applied to the topic, analyze a variety of primary sources, and investigate possible new avenues of historical inquiry.
I last taught this graduate seminar in fall 2022. This course explores the history of the Old and New U.S. South (colonial period to the present) to analyze its racial, social, intellectual, economic, and political evolution. Topics include race, class, and gender relations; political and economic transformations from slave society to high-tech “Sunbelt”; and the role of culture and memory in preserving Southern distinctiveness. Over the course of the semester, we will attempt to answer the following questions: Where is the South? How did the South become a distinct American region, and to what extent is it unique?
THINK 31 - Race & American Memory
In the fall of 2017, I team-taught this freshman seminar with Profs. Allyson Hobbs and Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Dr. Katherine Lennard as an instructor of record.
After the military surrender at the Appomattox Court House in 1865, the war came to an end, but the battle over memory and national identity had just begun. Stories told from different perspectives—past and present—shape our understanding of the conflicted heritage of race and identity in American culture. Engaging students in the analysis of personal essays, novels, poems, paintings, photographs, and films, the course asks how have Americans’ memories of the Civil War involved understandings of race? How has American national identity evolved since the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery? In doing so, it seeks to provide insight into how race has shaped national debates about freedom, citizenship, and changing notions of personal and collective identity.
After the military surrender at the Appomattox Court House in 1865, the war came to an end, but the battle over memory and national identity had just begun. Stories told from different perspectives—past and present—shape our understanding of the conflicted heritage of race and identity in American culture. Engaging students in the analysis of personal essays, novels, poems, paintings, photographs, and films, the course asks how have Americans’ memories of the Civil War involved understandings of race? How has American national identity evolved since the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery? In doing so, it seeks to provide insight into how race has shaped national debates about freedom, citizenship, and changing notions of personal and collective identity.
HIST 54S - The American Civil War
In the winter of 2016, I taught this Sources & Methods seminar as the instructor of record. Rather than a lecture course, the class focused on facilitating students' understanding of the American Civil War by prioritizing their hands-on engagement with the primary and secondary documents the war produced and inspired. The class was designed to have students study the war from a different historical focal point each week, including differing political, gendered, racial, and spatial perspectives.