Last weekend I gave a keynote address at a graduate history conference on power and struggle that was organized by students at the University of Alabama. I encouraged the graduate students to embrace complexity and nuance in their historical study,...
I wanted to get these tweets on record here at the blog. Also, some readers of the blog are not Twitter. I’m not going to go into background, but I encourage you to get up to speed here. Again, I...
I commented on Sweet’s piece here and here (including a long comment below the post). I thought it was well-done and a necessary reminder that the American Historical Association is made up of many historians, including those who are not...
He goes by the handle @Scootcork and his TikTok post is apparently going viral. Watch: @scootcork #stitch with @education.forum dude is just salty that there isn’t an NFT major #history #usa #college #teacher #ushistory ♬ Love You So – The...
Earlier this week the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s request to stop the January 6th committee from obtaining access to White House records related to the insurrection. The National Archives has sent the material to the House and the committee...
The Christian Century tackles a Texas bill that forbids the teaching of critical race theory and the 1619 Project. Here is a taste of its editorial: How should the story of our country be told? It says that schools should...
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...
Jonathan Last, the editor of the The Bulwark, thinks so. In his recent piece he focuses on anti-mask violence and a potential coup in Brazil. Is Last right? Is the world indeed getting more dangerous? I am not sure how...
Longtime listeners of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast may remember our interview with historian Erin Bartram in Episode 37: “Should You Go Grad School?” In that episode we discussed Bartram’s February 2018 blog post “The Sublimated Grief of...
I love this:...
Yale historian Timothy Snyder sees a lot of similarities between the discussion of race happening right now in American schools and the 20th-century European totalitarianism regimes thought about the past. Here is a taste of his piece The New York...
Watch: I don’t know what is really going on here, but I will give Greene the benefit of the doubt. I am encouraged that she changed her mind after visiting the Holocaust Museum. She learned some history today, and that...
There is a lot in this piece at Inside Higher Ed. Here is a small taste: What should we do? The first step is to clarify, in our own minds, what students ought to get out of these survey courses....
Over at NBC News, Kelly Fields wonders if critical race theory and patriotism can co-exist in classrooms. I would argue that they can co-exist. But the piece also makes a good case for the study of history and civics. Here...
Annie Thorn is senior history major from Kalamazoo, Michigan and our intern here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. As part of her internship she is writing a weekly column titled “Out of the Zoo.” It focuses on life as a...
Here is an e-mail I received today about a wonderful resource from the National Humanities Alliance: The National Humanities Alliance is pleased to announce the release of Strategies for Recruiting Students to the Humanities: A Comprehensive Resource! This resource, grounded in...
Ashley Bowen, the editor of Perspectives in History, raises some good points about the role of historians in public life. Here is a taste of her piece at Inside Higher Ed: Historians have been in the position of providing context...
Last week we called your attention to a decision by the San Francisco Board of Education’s decision to rename forty-four schools. I titled that post “When a school board ignores history.” Now Jonathan Zimmerman of the University of Pennsylvania has...
Yesterday I wrote about the White House’s conference on American history. Read that post here. Conservatives are cheering the event. Those on the Left–particularly academic historians–are trashing the event. There are a lot of reasons to be critical about what...
Parts of this post are based on my book Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past. In a recent piece at The Atlantic, Yale historian Joanne Freeman writes about Hamilton: The Musical: It has also gained new relevance over time, promoting...
