One of the greatest professional disappointments of the COVID-19 pandemic for me personally was the necessary cancellation of the 2020 Organization of American Historians (OAH) Annual Meeting. I had been super excited to participate in a panel called “State, Society, and ‘Correcting the Body,’” during which I would have presented research begun during my 2019 sabbatical. Instead I spent that April weekend in lock down, at home, helping my students and my own children transition to fully remote classes. I truly missed the opportunity to engage with fellow historians and teachers, and to hear about the new research happening in our field. This week, therefore, I want to encourage us all to visit the online resources of the many professional organizations dedicated to supporting our teaching and research.   Most of us belong to at least one professional organization. Maybe, like me, you have a pile of publications in your home office waiting to be read when the challenge of recording online lectures and holding virtual meetings with students wanes this summer. Don’t wait, however, to visit the organization’s web sites, many of which have been updated to support remote teaching and learning. Here are just a few examples:   The Organization of American Historians (OAH) is moving forward with this year’s Annual Meeting, Pathways to Democracy , virtually and has a robust schedule of panels and speakers available through their website. The event features both live and on-demand content this year, as well as workshops and discussion groups. The American Historical Association (AHA) has a particularly useful collection of online resources available through their Teaching & Learning Remote link, which reflect the wide-range of areas studied by AHA members. Materials are listed chronologically, geographically, thematically, and by resource type.    Visit the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations website for a list of articles on teaching foreign relations to secondary and post-secondary students, in addition to suggested syllabi and assignments . The site also includes an extensive list of digital archives useful for students researching US foreign relations. The Society for History Education has past issues of their publication, The History Teacher, archived on their website, allowing visitors access to dozens of articles on the practice and process of teaching history. Scrolling through the vast collection is a great way to think about refreshing lectures and topics in our courses with new research. Finally, check out the American Social History Project ’s list of History Resources for educators. Their current work on Teaching Elections and Mob Violence in US History may be of particular use this semester.   If you’ve let your membership to a professional organization lapse, still visit their site! Many of the resources are offered free-of-charge for student and faculty use. And, of course, consider renewing your professional memberships if you are able. As we approach the one year mark of teaching and learning from home, connecting with fellow teachers and researchers through professional organizations’ web presence is a great way to re-energize ourselves and our virtual classrooms.  ... View more

In a January 2019 blog titled “Making Connections: History & Medicine” I wrote about the importance of incorporating the history of health care into survey history courses. At the time I was deeply entrenched in sabbatical research on women and the treatment of the mentally ill, which afforded me the opportunity to explore lots of sources that were new to me as someone who had not previously studied the history of medicine. Fast forward two years and healthcare in the United States has become even more central to the narrative of general US and world history. Thankfully, there are numerous online sources that can supplement our courses as we navigate the constantly changing world of science and medicine.   As we have now entered the vaccination stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s useful to encourage students to look at the long and controversial history of vaccines in the United States. The College of Physicians of Physicians of Philadelphia has a fabulous interactive site that allows students to examine the history of vaccines worldwide through 2018 as well as an article titled “The Scientific Method in Vaccine History” that enables comparison of earlier practices in the development of vaccines to what we as a society have witnessed over the last twelve months. Ask students to think about the time frame that today’s scientists and public health officials have worked with in comparison to early efforts against smallpox and measles.    Film footage of mass-vaccination efforts are another interesting way to connect what students are seeing in news reports to historical events. Internet Archive enables students to search internationally-produced government films on vaccination efforts. Of particular interest to today’s students is “Unconditional Surrender,” which documents the story of the first child to be vaccinated against polio in the United States in 1954.   The American Social History Project has created “Epidemics in US History”   as a gathering point for primary sources on smallpox, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. The site provides links to online exhibits by the United States Library of Medicine, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Museum of the City of New York, each of which enable students to consider how American society has dealt with infectious disease in earlier periods.   Finally, the advertising industry’s long-standing relationship to healthcare is illustrated by the nearly 600 examples of health-related ads curated by the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, & Marketing History at Duke University.   Who knew, for example, that Scott Tissue was once marketed as a protective face mask?   Encouraging students to study such healthcare-related advertisements is yet another innovative way to advance discussion of our historical understanding of germs and disease, health and wellness.       ... View more

From mask wearing and individual rights to Black Lives Matter and police reform, acquaintances, friends, and family have found an infinite supply of topics on which to disagree on social media over the last twelve months. As I write this blog, votes are still being counted in the state of Georgia and protesters have stormed the US Capitol building. The political stakes are high and partisan rhetoric and uncivilized debate have taken over Facebook, Twitter, and other popular online platforms.    As an historian I’m particularly fascinated by the use of sources. Students in my January intensive course this week are choosing two article-length sources to use as supporting evidence in their short research projects. It is essential that they identify vetted, historically-accurate materials. In my introductory level courses the Works Cited page is submitted as a draft at the project’s start to make sure that students are on the right track with their research.    And yet … every single day I read something on social media, often written by someone I know, that has origins in a problematic source …   Case in point: a recent Facebook discussion about election fraud. “Friends” of mine were engaged in a spirited debate about accusations of voter fraud throughout history. The friends, all of whom are college-educated professionals, were using Wikipedia articles to substantiate their claims -- sharing, at various points, brief segments copied and pasted from the site as evidence. Sadly, there was not enough time in the day for me to verify whether the Wikipedia articles my friends were citing were factually accurate. It took all of my strength, however, not to interject a comment about their poor choice of sources.    I do not allow my students to use non-academic sources such as Wikipedia or history.com as references for their history research. I know that some historians do, and that others use studies of the sites as opportunities for students to correct inaccuracies that are posted online. I tell my students that Wikipedia is a great source for information that -- right or wrong -- will not adversely affect the outcome of anything significant; what year did “Mission Impossible II” hit theaters or how tall is Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton? (2000 and 5’7½ respectively)   Nowadays, however, I’m feeling a sense of personal responsibility as a historian to tell people they are citing unreliable sources. I’m trying really hard to not destroy personal relationships by footnoting “friends’” Facebook posts but the situation begs the question: is it impolite to correct friends’ and families’ historically inaccurate opinions online? Where do we as historians draw the line between being right and being polite? ... View more

This week I’m attempting what feels like the impossible: I’m transforming a fifteen-week survey course into a three-week winter session. Yikes.    Many two and four-year schools offer short, intensive courses in a variety of fields and formats over the January break. In my case, I will be delivering “US History since 1877” fully online. Although I’ve taught six-week summer courses for many years, the three-week format is new to me and somewhat daunting.    I spent a good part of this week deciding how best to assess students in such a short period of time. For better or worse, the students will have to take on a great deal of independent learning and I definitely worry about whether they know what they are getting themselves into: fifteen chapters of historical narrative will be covered in a period of eighteen class days.   After several discussions with colleagues in a variety of disciplines, I decided to break the course into three units of six class-days. Each unit will contain roughly five chapters of material. I will assign a reading quiz for each chapter and a discussion for each unit, which will draw together the major themes of the unit’s chapters. Students will have a research project assigned on the first day and due on the last, a well as a final exam. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!    I need to continuously remind myself that students take short, intensive courses for a number of reasons, most of which involve needing credits to complete their degree. At the same time, however, I do not want their need to get the course done quickly to take away from what I see as the value of a US history course. This challenge, I believe, may be the greatest to the process of condensing a full-semester course into the time frame of winter session.    Unlike in typical-length semesters when I rely upon the College’s student evaluations for feedback, I’ve decided to survey the students myself at the end of the January term to find out what did and did not work for them. I’m very curious to learn whether students’ expectations of workload were realistic. And, I’d love to hear from anyone in the Macmillan Community who has taught a three-week intensive course -- history or any other subject. Advice? Suggestions? I’m all ears! ... View more

It’s safe to say that most of us are tired of COVID-19. We are hopeful that 2021 will see the introduction of a safe and effective vaccine so that the Pandemic of 2020 can be relegated to the archives along with cloth masks and journals documenting the many hours of quarantine we spent watching television!   As a historian and teacher, however, I cannot let 2020 commence without one last suggestion as to how we can help our students contextualize our national experience this year by comparing current social and political conditions to a historical period of public health crisis.    Last week students in my US Women’s History class read this fascinating article: “The Pioneering Health Officer Who Saved Portland from the Plague” ( Smithsonian Magazine) by Bess Lovejoy, which tells the story of Esther Pohl, an obstetrician tasked with navigating Portland, Oregon, through a 1907 outbreak of bubonic plague as the city’s health officer. Pohl’s work in Portland at the start of the twentieth century was groundbreaking. One of only a few female physicians in the city, Pohl sprung into action as the city’s health commissioner in response to her study of an earlier plague that had ravaged sections of Honolulu’s Chinatown, leading that city to intentionally burn buildings to stop the disease’s spread in 1899. San Francisco, she learned, confronted the same plague in 1900, quarantining 25,000 residents of Chinese-descent in a 15-block area.    Pohl, Lovejoy writes, “designed an anti-plague strategy [for Portland] that combined her scientific and technical expertise with an understanding of the power of the press.” She invited the press to inspect and report on areas of Portland’s waterfront where garbage was attracting large numbers of rats, known as the primary carriers of the bubonic plague. Unlike in Hawaii and California where politicians had made unsubstantiated connections between Chinese communities and the spread of the plague, Pohl “avoided racist rhetoric and targeted [clean up of] the waterfront instead….” My students were particularly interested in Pohl’s personal call for community action: “everyone in the city, rich and poor, should consider it his duty to exterminate rats.”   Esther Pohl’s story is a useful example of the kinds of challenges that educated women were tackling at the start of the twentieth century. Even though Pohl could not legally vote, she was committed professionally to using her knowledge and skills to aid her community and was subsequently recognized as an expert in a time of crisis. More importantly, considering the time in which we currently live, Lovejoy’s article acknowledges the long history of ethnic discrimination associated with public health crises in the United States and one female doctor’s ability to handle the crisis effectively without resorting to racism and ethnocentrism.    My students, many of whom are the children of immigrants, were saddened by the fact that more than one hundred years after state governments’ xenophobic actions in Honolulu and San Francisco targeted people of Chinese heritage, politicians in 2020 have made similarly racist charges in relation to COVID-19. No doubt future history textbooks will document President Trump’s references to the “kung flu” and “Chinese virus” as an example of how slow our nation’s progress on race has truly been. Nonetheless, introducing our students to the work of Esther Pohl and other pioneers in public health is a great way to impress upon them that the experience of 2020 is not in itself unique. History presents us with examples of positive and negative responses by human beings to crisis, and offers our students opportunity for both intellectual growth and self reflection.  ... View more

The first woman elected vice president, Kamala Harris, is also the first person of Indian descent and the first African-American elected to the position. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, will be the first “second gentleman.” The fact that this historic moment meets us in the year of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment provides a rare opportunity to allow our students to look at the evolution of politics and gender roles over the period of exactly a century.   One of the simplest but most memorable lessons a history professor taught me during my undergraduate years was not to assume that change in the face of a tumultuous event would be permanent. Case in point: white women and black Americans saw significant gains in wages during World War I. When the war ended, however, they found themselves relegated once again to low-paying service jobs. Change, therefore, is a gradual process. Women were able to vote in 1920 but it would be many more years until they were respected as a voting block. There is still no Equal Rights Amendment and the regulation of women’s bodies is a consistent topic of debate in national elections.    In the shadow of the 2020 election, for this week’s short writing assignment, I’m asking students in my US Women’s History and Black History classes to identify the specific changes that they believe led us to this historic moment. Here is my assignment:   Think about the concepts of historical cause and effect: identify three moments in our nation’s history that, in your opinion, had to happen for a bi-racial woman to be elected vice president of the United States. In other words, without these three moments/events the historic change brought by last week’s election could not have happened. For each moment/event that is identified, explain briefly how it contributed to Harris’s election. (200-300 words)   I’m *hoping* that my students will have a difficult time narrowing down the influential factors to three. For this assignment, however, I do not intend for there to be right or wrong answers. Instead, I want them to think about the continuum of change and to see Harris’s election as a step in the process of development that has occurred as our comparatively young nation continues to mature. I look forward to sharing the students’ perspectives in a future blog.    How are you working with students to understand the historical significance of this election year? Please share.   ... View more

Author, Merry Wiesner-Hanks, on what’s new in this edition of A History of World Societies, including a new thematic emphasis on environmentalism and updated scholarship! ... View more

I'm not a fan of being asked by students for "extra credit" assignments. Finally, however, this semester, I've found a reason to adopt a form of the practice in hopes that my students will gain some extra knowledge along the way to their coveted extra points.   A continuously evolving result of the rise in civil rights activism prompted by the death of George Floyd in May has been new attention by the media and public on the history of black Americans. Most recently, as our nation marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, mainstream publications highlighted the participation of black women in the suffrage movement. As a historian it has been heartening for me to see non-academic friends post articles about the work of Ida Wells on social media, among other courageous black women who were previously relegated to footnotes.   As we approach what is likely to be a uniquely different fall semester, I want to encourage my students to take note of new spaces where they are seeing black history acknowledged. It’s not February, after all -- “Black History Month” -- and the sad reality is that prior to the tumultuous summer of 2020 most Americans did not know anything about Juneteenth or the Greenwood (Tulsa) Massacre of 1921. As a historian I want to see this new public fascination with black history find its way permanently into our K-12 curriculum so that the first time a student learns about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow is not in my college classroom.    One of my goals, however, is also to help students to recognize that understanding black history means more than knowing the ideological differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Our students need to acknowledge with the help of history the level to which racism and stereotyping have infiltrated all aspects of American society.    We each have to start somewhere so my simple plan for this fall is to share an article -- weekly or bi-weekly -- that will encourage deeper reflection by my students and not just memorization of famous names and speeches.    The article I’ve chosen to share to start the semester is “The Penn Museum Moves Collection of Enslaved People’s Skulls into Storage” ( Smithsonian , 4 August 2020). To those unfamiliar with the work of physician Samuel George Morton I invite you to read the article (and the various sources linked within) to learn about the Museum’s display of skulls, including at least 50 that critics argue were used by Morton and others “as pseudo-scientific evidence of a racial hierarchy and justification for slavery.” Students at the Ivy League school were instrumental in pushing for removal of the skulls from the Museum’s display.   My plan is to create an extra-credit generating discussion board that will provide space for students to respond to the articles, share perspectives, and ask questions. I will encourage them to reflect on how the subject matter enlightens their personal understanding of black history as well as the way that the particular topic informs us how racism came to be so deeply ingrained in the American psyche. It is my hope that this first article, for example, will encourage students to begin thinking about scientific racism several weeks before we reach the subject matter in the textbook and simultaneously expand on whichever topic we are covering during a particular week in a no-stakes environment of extra-credit discussion.    Extra credit: yay or nay? New assignments to help your students engage in the world around them while learning new course content?  Please share. ... View more

In a recent blog I suggested that we ask our students to think about statues and memorials in their local communities that they would change. One of my goals for the coming school year is to encourage my students to be more aware of their local history and try to place it within the larger narrative of our nation’s past. In 1944 the American Historical Association published American History In Schools and Colleges in which they addressed the vast field of US history education. While there is much about the document that is now out of date -- content recommendations, for example, completely exclude women and non-white people -- I find one of the authors’ many  conclusions still worthy of consideration: “The study of American history can help to produce loyal, intelligent, cooperative, well-rounded citizens only if our society honors citizens who possess these qualities.” (Chapter Two)   I am struck by this statement as someone who relishes teaching my students about the uncooperative and disloyal. The Patriots were not cooperating with the mother country when they tarred and feathered Loyalists and declared their independence in the 1770s. Nat Turner refused cooperation with his master when he led an insurrection in 1831. Abolitionists expressed disloyalty to the nation when they rallied against anti-slavery petition gag orders and the Fugitive Slave Act. The 20th century has no shortage of intelligent but disloyal un-cooperatives: Alice Paul, WEB DuBois, Malcolm X, Dolores Huerta, and Gloria Steinem to name just a few.   What draws me to this aged quote from 1944, however, is that some semblance of this ideology still lingers today: the sentiment that certain people should be memorialized as examples to the rest of us. Who we choose to honor is a central question present in today’s public debates about monuments, statues, flags, and names of military installations.    Recently journalist Murray Whyte grappled with this topic in an insightful article titled “Weighing the fate of our most problematic public art” ( Boston Globe , July 10, 2020) Whyte describes the challenges faced by communities struggling to decide what to physically do with monuments determined to be no longer welcome or acceptable. “While defenders, such as the president, cite ‘heritage,’ there is no getting around a simple fact: Colonial monuments were always about domination -- powerfully, clearly, and publicly,” Whyte argues. “In the Jim Crow South, Confederate monuments were symbols of an old racist order, alive and cruelly dominant long after the Union victory in the war. But does locking away history, however ugly, counter the damage it causes?”    Whyte’s piece encourages us as students of history to think about ways in which memorials and  public art that reflect problematic historical moments in our nation’s past can encourage further discourse. Historians and artists that Whyte spoke to expressed concern that complete removal of certain monuments may mean a loss of opportunity for public conversation about uncomfortable historical realities. Where do these relics go? How do we continue to engage with them even if we as a society have acknowledged that they should not be revered?   As historians we need to be continuously cognizant of what our students take with them from our classrooms into the public space. Students who understand that the disloyal and uncooperative have made significant, often positive changes in our nation’s history will, I believe, be better able to contextualize memorials and recognize that the nation’s historical record is far more complicated than any singular monument. As we look toward a future of new public efforts to document our nation's past I hope that we as a society are able to embrace a more diverse and honest conversation about our collective history. ... View more

The former state hospital in my town has been repurposed into an office building and luxury apartments. I drive by it regularly on my way to the grocery store. Its existence inspired the research I began in 2015 seeking to better understand the care of mentally ill women in the late 19th century. My initial curiosity about that building has contributed to my reading dozens of books on the history of mental illness and women’s healthcare, in addition to spending many, many hours in libraries and archives.   The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed my research considerably. The archival work I was conducting is paused for the time being because access to the libraries is no longer available. Moving all of my courses online and planning for a seemingly un-plan-able fall semester have meant that time I would have spent this summer on research and writing has instead been dedicated to lots of online meetings and e-mail discussions about this past spring and the fall semester ahead. And yet, the voices that have spoken to me through my research still constantly weigh on my thoughts.   Group exercise classes were allowed to resume outside last week here in Massachusetts so my favorite yoga teacher held our class in the courtyard space at the former state hospital -- beautiful green grass, benches, flowering trees and shrubs surrounded the students who remarked on the beauty and tranquility of the space. What played over and over in my head, however, were the stories of men and women who had lived amidst the walls of what formerly was a state institution for those deemed “insane.” I was struck in that moment by how easy it is for history to be forgotten and stories lost -- for kind, well-meaning people to have absolutely no idea of the space they are in, its history and significance.    The history teacher in me had to resist the urge to interrupt students’ friendly banter about the beauty of the place with anecdotes of the sadness that would have surrounded us in that same space many years before. The experience has me thinking about voices that are lost as we re-purpose old spaces and contemplate the monuments that decorate our communities. Most of us spend very little time considering their meanings or wondering why one building is saved and others are demolished; why one person is memorialized and others forgotten, until we are forced to consider such questions. Right now, for example, statues of Christopher Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt, and Confederate leaders, among others, are being removed nationwide. It is time, as a society, to start really thinking about whose likeness should be erected in  place of these relics of the past.   Part of my planning for fall, then, is to design an assignment that will ask students to “replace” -- in essay form -- a historical monument/statue in their community. I’m asking the students to think not only about the history of the chosen monument as it stands today -- what/who it memorializes, when it was built, etc -- but also about ways in which the local community has celebrated or protested the memorial’s existence. What reactions does the current monument elicit from people in the community?  From visitors? And, most importantly, to the student, does the monument represent the community’s past, present and future?    I’m hoping that this assignment will force students to think more seriously about the issue of historical monuments: who makes decisions about the figures that a community chooses to publicly revere and why. For my students here in New England, I think this is especially relevant to ensure that they do not see the issue of Confederate statue removal as specific to only southern states but as a challenge to all communities throughout the United States to do better. ... View more

For me, and no doubt many others in the Macmillan Community, staying motivated since the widespread social distancing orders and campus shutdowns began in March has been extremely difficult. I’d love to be able to say that I’ve used extra time at home gained from not commuting to write or to read. Instead I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time keeping track of how many weeks it has been since I was last in my campus office (seven) and how long it has been since I had my haircut by a professional (seventy days). Some of the things I never thought I could miss -- a student walking into class after I had started lecture and asking a question I had already addressed -- are now the mundane normalcy I long for. When it was clear that I would have to move classes from on-campus to online, I made a few changes to my syllabi. I had intended for students in one class, for example, to be using books and other library reference materials (not online) for an end-of-semester project. The closing of our campus as well as public libraries meant changing the assignment drastically to accommodate the students while still meeting the academic demands of the course. I’ve come to the conclusion that I can only do my best with the situation that all of us faculty face in this pandemic. I’ve said much the same to students who have been in touch about work and family issues that are significantly hampering their ability to complete the semester.  This week, then, I want to find some positive areas on which to focus amidst this scary and depressing academic semester. There are some interesting assignments and projects being created by historians in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that are helping me to stay interested in the larger challenge of historical memory that will be so critical to future generations. Here are just three examples:  The Washington Post last week highlighted an assignment created by University of Central Florida adjunct faculty member Kevin Mitchell Mercer in which students were asked to write about an artifact from 2020 that historians could use a century from now to tell the story of the pandemic. The Twitter discussion that followed the newspaper's coverage of Mercer’s assignment provides some insight into how our students are struggling with this major disruption in their academic and personal lives and will be valuable to future historians studying the social implications of the pandemic.  In light of the intense focus now placed on 1918, the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) has put out a call for fellow historians to more fully document the history of the 1918 pandemic. SHGAPE will publish contributions by historians and other academics as blog entries intended to expand understanding of the 1918 pandemic while we grapple with the current crisis. Interested researchers from any field should visit this link .  Finally, the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy seeks public participation in its effort to document the experiences of Americans in pharmacies during this pandemic. The organization invites the public to “share your pharmacy stories, photos, videos, artifacts, and other documentation of the COVID-19 pandemic.” For more information visit the Project’s web site https://aihp.org/collections/aihp-covid19-project/ The advertising industry keeps reminding us that we are “all in this together.” So what are you doing to keep yourself intellectually motivated during this difficult time? Are you planning for summer and fall classes or simply trying to get through the end of spring semester? Please share! ... View more

Although I’ve been working with college students now for more than twenty years, this semester has been unlike any we in academia have experienced in the past. A few years back, during a particularly difficult New England winter, my college canceled school on three consecutive Mondays because of snow storms. That semester one of my US History II classes met only on Mondays for 2½ hours. Very few students in the class had internet in their homes so most relied on the college computing center for WiFi and technology access. I remember being flustered at how far off the syllabus we were when the semester finally ended in May.  Here, in the spring 2020, however, we have clumsily converted our on-campus courses to fully online. I say clumsily because most faculty had a week or less to figure out how to best implement changes to on-campus practices in an online environment. For my colleagues at a community college we faced the enormous challenge of insufficient internet and technology access by our students. In the face of this pandemic we have been fortunate that our college has the resources to lend materials to students and help them gain short-term home access to WiFi. Since hindsight is, of course, 20/20, I thought it would be helpful this week to acknowledge three simple things I wish I had known and/or done in January 2020:  Students must have a library orientation during the first weeks of the semester. Usually we venture to the library as a class after the midterm for guidance on research projects. Had I taken this step earlier in the semester, however, more of my students would have been comfortable accessing library materials from home when the COVID-19 closures began, which would have made certain assignments easier to integrate. Students must have everything they need for the entire semester at the start. In the past I have been really lax with students when it comes to getting copies of supplementary readings (novels, memoirs, etc). Oftentimes on the first day of class I will say something to the effect of: “You do not need a copy of this novel until late March.” Not anymore. Lesson learned the hard way as I currently have students unable to get access to library materials and unable to afford to purchase books online because of COVID-19-related loss of income. Students must be able to download and upload materials to/from our learning management system. My on-campus students generally pass in written work in printed form. I’m learning from this semester’s experience that many of those students who choose to never take online classes do not actually know how to upload their work as an email attachment or to a learning management system’s drop box. This fall I plan to have every on-campus student submit a one-paragraph autobiography to me via our LaunchPad dropbox as a low-stakes assignment. In turn, they will be downloading my autobiography. I’m hoping to quickly identify anyone who may need extra help with our online tools as the semester is starting. Given the speed at which we were forced to move from on-campus to fully online, these three simple tasks completed at the start of the semester might have helped my students and me transition with less stress. As educators we already need to be adaptable in unexpected situations. The COVID-19 crisis has shown us how important it is for us to prepare for big-picture crisis management. While we are fortunate to have the option to continue working with our on-campus students through online platforms, we still need to work together to find ways to make the process seamless in the future. ... View more

I think it’s safe to say that none of us are experiencing the spring semester we envisioned when it began in January. I was on Spring Break when COVID-19-related closures, cancellations, and postponements began. My college extended our break a second week to give faculty time to plan for fully-online teaching and students an opportunity to figure out what their at-home technology needs will be.  For students who take all their courses in traditional, on-campus classrooms the change to fully online is daunting. A few have emailed me and expressed concern about their internet access. I’ve sent dozens of emails to students over the past seven days with instructions about plans for this coming week online. I can only hope that students are able to access email at home and are carefully reading my messages. It is my hope that in the months that follow this crisis there will be a larger discussion about internet access for all. As a commuter campus, many of my students rely on the college’s computing center or their public library for WiFi access necessary for their academic work. With the campus completely closed to human visitors, it remains to be seen what the impact will be on students’ ability to complete courses. No doubt we are all struggling to learn as much as possible about the current pandemic while  finding ways to help our students understand the historical context. For those of you not familiar with the history of medicine and healthcare in the United States, I want to recommend some resources that may be useful during this time. For general suggestions about connecting the history of medicine to survey-level US history classes, see my blog from January 2019 “Making Connections: History & Medicine” . If you have not previously incorporated healthcare history into survey courses, now is a great time to start planning to do so in the future.  Revisiting my 2018 blog about influenza may also be helpful, see “Sharing ‘the Flu’ with Students” . My US History II students studied the 1918 outbreak in February. I’ve heard from several students who feel some relief in having historical context with which to evaluate this current crisis.  Finally, there are many informative articles being published online that can be useful in our struggle to contextualize current events for today’s anxious students. I highly recommend history faculty visit PULSE: Medical & Health Humanities , a site produced by scholars in the Netherlands; particularly useful is Professor Manon Parry’s article “Learning from the (Recent) Past” (March 23rd, 2020). In addition, many scholars are sharing materials online to help each other through this challenging teaching moment. The American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM)’s Facebook page is a great place for historians and teachers to ask questions and exchange information, including primary sources, during this crisis. Finally, it may also be meaningful to remind your students that they are living through a major historical event. Suggest that they keep a journal or scrapbook to memorialize this period of their life. Historians of the future will one day be gathering evidence of what we experienced during this pandemic. Encouraging our students to document their personal experiences is a great way to connect them to the larger human narrative that we seek to share as historians.  ... View more

In January the New York Times evaluated the narratives presented by eight US history textbooks  to explore the choices states make about history education. Focusing on California and Texas, in “Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two Stories”  Dana Goldstein argues, “In a country that cannot come to a consensus on fundamental questions — how restricted capitalism should be, whether immigrants are a burden or a boon, to what extent the legacy of slavery continues to shape American life — textbook publishers are caught in the middle. On these questions and others, classroom materials are not only shaded by politics, but are also helping to shape a generation of future voters.” As a full-time faculty member I have complete control over which textbook I choose for my community college students. Nonetheless, I was fascinated by the Times examination of the textbook question because what students learn in K-12 truly influences how they think about the world around them and the ideas of our national history that they bring with them to college. In most public schools history teachers are racing to cover dozens of topics in the span of a nine-month school year. For those whose states require standardized testing for graduation, the stakes are often higher and more complex. The political differences evidenced by the topical choices made by textbook publishers did not surprise me. More conservative school boards choose textbooks that reflect their way of thinking and vice versa for moderate and liberal boards. What fascinated me most about the Times piece were the comments by readers. I’m assuming that demographically the average New York Times reader is both educated and interested in the world around him/her. Threads among the more than 600 comments, however, reflected readers’ short-sighted assessments of the quality of teachers who use textbooks. “Very Silly in Colorado,” for example: “I had incredible history professors in high school...none of them used textbooks.” “James from Boston,” a teacher, boasts the “use [of] zero textbooks” in his classroom. Other readers suggested the development of one textbook to be used by public school children nationwide would solve the problem of over-zealous school boards. “AJC in Paris” writes “If only we could have a National Curriculum researched and vetted by educators only.”  These -- and many, many other -- comments concern me on a number of levels. The notion that a classroom teacher is somehow deficient or lazy because he/she uses a textbook needs to be dispelled immediately. I teach at a community college. My students range in age from seventeen-year-old high school students working towards college credit to traditional eighteen-year old freshman to middle-age parents trying to complete degrees or changing careers. We need a common place to start: a shared narrative to explore, which is what a good textbook provides. Are there students in my classes who disagree at times with the textbook publishers’ thematic choices or are critical of what they view as a political perspective? Absolutely. Nonetheless, the text is a central starting point for my teaching. Am I biased in my choice? Yes! Although I teach the general US surveys, I deliberately choose a textbook that focuses specifically on social and cultural history. No doubt a political historian would find my choice short-sighted. The notion of a “national curriculum” is also problematic. The idea that such a thing could be created without bias is implausible. Historians are among the scholars best suited to convey to students a deeper understanding of the reality that all information is, in fact, biased: from the newspapers that we read, to the texts/emails/letters that we send, to the textbooks in all of our classrooms. In the classroom we make choices based on what we believe will work best with our student population and school boards do the same in their communities. Recent criticism of the The 1619 Project by prominent scholars should remind us that even historians do not completely agree when it comes to modern-day interpretations of America’s past.  As historians and teachers, the best that we can do for our students is offer them a starting point for understanding our national past, recognizing that all interpretations are going to be influenced (in good ways and bad) by biased sources. Encouraging the students to find the flaws in the sources -- even in their course textbooks -- might be the most effective way to guard against creating a generation of students whose beliefs conform to only one idea or argument. Helping our students recognize and question bias needs to start in our classrooms with our textbooks. ... View more