Teaching

Below are a list of course descriptions for courses I’ve taught as well as those I’m currently developing, resources and guides I created for my students, and courses I’ve served as a teaching assistant for during my graduate career. All items on this page are CC-BY. Please contact me for permissions for using course content and/or with any questions, recommendations, job offers…

Courses taught:

HIST 110: History of the U.S. to 1877: This is a freshman-level seminar capped at 25 students. The course provides an overview of the major ideas, people, and events that shaped the history of the U.S. to 1877, including aspects of daily life and issues of class, gender, and race that influenced the nation’s development and character. The course is organized around seven themes and emphasizes discussion, analysis of primary source material, and improvement in understanding the process of doing history, communicating complex ideas orally, and thinking and writing historically. I am teaching this course in the Fall of 2013.

• Link to pdf of syllabus above. Full course schedule and assignment descriptions available upon request.

HIST 112: History of the Present U.S.: This is a freshman-level survey course capped at 30 students. This course examines contemporary issues in American society and interrogates the historical roots of those issues from a transnational and comparative perspective. The class will spend three to four weeks at a time exploring and discussing a selection of themes prominent in present-day America. Students will vote upon one of the three themes to be included in the course via a survey given at the beginning of the semester. Themes for consideration include foundations of American life, global economic change and American industrial capitalism; race in American society; immigration and American identity; technological change and the American worker; war, soldiers and the American state; gender, sexuality, and masculinity in American culture; and religion and reform: individualism and community in American life.

  • Link to pdf of syllabus above. Full course schedule and assignment descriptions available upon request.

Courses developed:

HIST 105: American Ways: This is a freshman-only seminar capped at 30 students. We examine the development and history of American society and culture in reverse chronological order through a series of themes: American history today, war and the American state, technology, political development and change, immigration and identity, and reform movements and utopianism. The seminar emphasizes discussion, analysis of primary source material, and improvement in understanding the process of doing history, communicating complex ideas orally, and thinking and writing historically.

  • Link to pdf of syllabus above. Full course schedule and assignment descriptions available upon request.

HIST 202: History of the U.S. After 1877: This is a freshman-level survey course capped at 200 students. It provides an introduction to the major social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments in American history from the late nineteenth century forward. We will examine people, systems of government, religious beliefs, pop culture events, and various other movements and themes in our effort to understand the reality of the past. Emphasis will be placed upon human perceptions of and interaction with the natural environment as well as the impact of technology.

HIST 347: A Global History of the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century: This course will provide students the opportunity to gain in-depth familiarity with the major contours of the history of the United States within the context of the nineteenth century world. Bearing in mind that the United States is one “nation among nations,”1 we will begin the course with a discussion of the Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and conclude with an analysis of the global impact of the First World War and the rise of Progressivism in the Atlantic World. Throughout the duration of the course we will examine social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments in the U.S. during the long nineteenth century while remaining attentive to the ways the U.S. as a nation-state is situated within larger global patterns and processes. Weekly discussions of the course materials and individual research will encourage the development and advancement of students’ analytical skills, critical thinking, and ability to effectively communicate ideas and arguments orally. Improvement in these areas over the course of the semester will be assessed via participation in class discussions and via student performance in two book reviews and a final research paper. The course is designed for upper-level undergraduates and is capped at 45 students.

HIST 397: Utopian Movements in U.S. History: In this course students will examine American traditions of utopian thought, reform, and practice from the colonial period to the latter half of the twentieth century. We will begin by exploring the utopian ideals present in the early American colonies and their impact on both the American Revolution and the formation of American national identity. We will then focus on specific examples from each of the primary waves of utopian movements in U.S. history: the 1820s, 1840s, 1870s, and 1890s, devoting particular attention to the impact of each of these movements on the politics and social movements of the time in light of their participants’ thoughts and practices regarding the relationships between the individual and the community, education and reform, gender and sexuality, industrialization and nature, work and family life, economic equality and social justice, and religion and society. The course will conclude with an overview of the connections between these early utopian movements and several major twentieth century experiments in cooperative living. Students will analyze change over time in examples of utopian thought and practice via the below historical, literary, and film sources. This course is designed for upper-level undergraduates and is capped at 45 students.

• Link to pdf of reading list above. Full syllabus, course schedule, and assignment descriptions available upon request.

Student resources and guides:

Courses I served as a teaching assistant in:

• Classical Mythology, Spring 2013, Professor Thomas Winter, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I also taught 3 recitation sections for this course.
• Classical Mythology, Fall 2012, Professor Thomas Rinkevich, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I also taught 3 recitation sections for this course.
• American History to 1877, Spring 2012, Professor Kenneth Winkle, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• American History to 1877, Fall 2011, Professor Timothy Mahoney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
• American History After 1877, Spring 2010, Professor Rose Holz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• World History Since 1500 C.E., Fall 2009, Professor Tara Wood-Seefeldt, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I also taught 2 recitation sections for this course.
• Women in History, Spring 2009, Professor Christine Dempsey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• History of the Middle Ages, Fall 2008, Professor Jessica Coope, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• American History After 1877, Summer 2008, Professor Randy Reddekopp, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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