Here is a taste of a lecture I gave last week at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. Scroll back to watch the entire lecture.
contingency
Do you want to make the past more interesting for your students? Focus on contingency.
In my book Why Study History (revised second edition coming in March 2024!) I introduce students and other readers to Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke’s five Cs of historical thinking. They are change over time, context, causality, complexity, and contingency. […]
Bernard Bailyn: “Historians know how it all came out, but the people of the time didn’t”
In this 2010 lecture, the late Harvard historian Bernardo Bailyn says: Historians know how it all came out, but the people of the time didn’t. The most important things in their lives was the uncertainty. We haven’t got a clue […]
The “Umbrella Man” is back
Tonight is the first night of content in my “Introduction to History” course. I love using this video to teach historical thinking, especially causality, complexity, and contingency: I discuss how I use this video on page 10-11 in Why Study […]