One of the core philosophies in my teaching was to move away from single-use or disposable assignments, and move to something more durable. Let’s face it: students create too many essays that disappear into a digital drawer at the end of the semester, never to be seen again. Their labour gets a grade, but it …
Even in my department I occasionally have had to explain that “No, me teaching the Shang dynasty is not playing on home terrain. That’s like a historian of nineteenth century Europe teaching about emperor Augustus and the Roman empire, mkay?” Feel free to replace that with a similar 1800-2000 year interval of your choice. Chinese …
In last Friday’s post, you may have noticed a little hippo in the right bottom corner, observing carefully how Squirrel compares the PRC/East Asia to the size of the US. Who’s that little fella? That’s William, the Muhlenberg College unofficial History Department mascot, lovingly borrowed from the Met Museum’s original plush version of the little …
How do you explain to your colleagues that your courses cover an area larger than the US (the main frame of reference), and a couple thousand years more than they usually do, even if they’re historians? My tenure committee itself included people from political science, chemistry, mathematics, film studies/English and more. My first concern was …
The narrative or personal statement for a tenure file is not my favourite genre to write, for a lot of reasons. My coach and I decided I needed to find a way to inject some joy and larger purpose into the entire exercise since I do not respond well to pointless things –and the statement …
