Teaching

HIS 5450 – History and Social Studies Education – is a graduate course where students works towards a signature pedagogy in secondary history/social studies. Students work throughout the semester on creating a product of learning. This portfolio conveys both their identity as a history educator as well as their approaches to teaching (and reinforcing) historical thinking in the classroom. Participants employ an array of tools and strategies that include new media technologies, digital literacy, globalizing the the curriculum, Understanding by Design, and student-centered learning (among others) in the development of their curriculum materials.

HIS 5595 – Digital History – is a graduate course where students analyze the changes of the last three decades when the “digital shift” has raised interesting possibilities for historians in terms of research, production, and teaching. We will also discuss critical questions about new media and history. For example, what kinds of new research methods are needed to analyze and interpret sources when our present digital archive grows at an explosive rate? And, how do digital publishing platforms challenge traditional historical norms, processes, and authority? Throughout the course, participants will use new media technologies to re-assess the value and meaning of history.

HIS 3626 – Introduction to Secondary History/Social Studies Education (ISHSSE) – introduces students to the craft of teaching history/social studies to high school students. Students examine state and national standards, best practices in curriculum design, and strategies for summative and formative assessments. They analyze how educators foster a learning environment focused on historical thinking skills. ISHSSE is about moving beyond the lecture-PowerPoint-worksheet-video model … and towards an authentic, engaging, and dynamic learning environment in our digitally and globally-connected age.

HIS 3630 – Teaching History in the Digital Age – analyzes how new media and digital tools have changed history education. The digital turn has raised new questions about how we research, write, learn, and teach about the past (“how do audiences engage with the past online?” and  “how can educators promote historical inquiry through digital tools and new media?”) Today, historians reach wide audiences online via websites, digitized collections, e-publications, social media, and more. Students thus develop a series of projects (with lesson plans) that make use of digital tools for teaching about the past.

HIS 3310 – Sports & the Making of the Americas – explores the role of sports in the construction of identities across the Americas. Why sports? Sport reveals to us the collective ways in which people imagine themselves, articulate their values, and make sense of their daily lives. Students study how sports have shaped gender, class, and national identities from Canada to the Southern Cone. They analyze the connections between politics and sportsmen, and how athletics shaped other forms of pop culture, at a hemispheric, national, and regional level (i.e. US South).

In FIFA World Cup: Global History & Soccer, students examine the impact of the FIFA World Cup in world history. The “beautiful game” is indeed the world’s most popular sport. The men’s FIFA World Cup is the largest televised/streamed sporting event — viewed by over 2 billion people every four years. In 2022, the tournament was held for the first time in the Middle East. The host nation, Qatar, is not as well known for international soccer as previous host nations; yet, the region’s passion for كرة القدم (kurat alqadam) is just as strong. Women’s soccer has also seen enormous growth in Europe and Latin America over the last decade. In this course, students analyze soccer as a field of research and focus on a major theme for their senior seminar paper.

In A History of the Middle Class, students examine the notion of a middle class, which is a fairly recent phenomenon in world history. Those who ascribe to this class (or at least a middle-class consciousness) often see themselves as a stabilizing force in society, acting as “go-betweens,” or intermediaries, between the elite/powerful and the poor/powerless by virtue of their education and social ascendancy. What can we learn about a history that is not “from below,” nor “top-down,” but squarely in an imagined middle?