End of the Semester, end of the blog, and Hamilton
As every semester does, this one has come to an end. Students are writing their take home exams, professors are... Continue reading →
Historical Analogies
Today I was very pleased to read Lin Fisher’s great article over at Vox about the perils of historical analogies.... Continue reading →
Conference to Classroom
We’ve had a bit of a hiatus on blog posts, as well a bit of a break in the class... Continue reading →
Outlining Religion and the American Revolution
Since I started working on the subject of religion and the American Revolution, the central question has been: “what does that... Continue reading →
Everything Old is New Again (sort of)
For class yesterday we read Edmund Morgan’s classic article, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox.” The article is forty-three years... Continue reading →
Writing for Aunt Marilyn: Involving Students in Public Humanities
In class today, I gave students my regular spiel about writing for their Aunt Marilyn. The gender and name of this... Continue reading →
Notes from the week after Spring Break, or, Challenges of a Digital Humanities History Classroom
We’re half way through our shared project of transcribing newspaper articles from the revolutionary era so we can analyze them... Continue reading →
Getting ready to clean some data!
So, the students have entered, in at least partial form, 338 articles as of now. Thanks to Paper Machines, we... Continue reading →
Principles, principles, principles
I have been a bit surprised, in this chaotic, fascinating, maddening, terrifying election cycle, how infrequently the principles of the... Continue reading →
Timeless topics
And we’re off! Students have selected topics, related to religion and the American Revolution, that they will be researching in... Continue reading →
Keywords for religion and the American Revolution
We’re starting part II of the semester: building a shared database about religion and the American Revolution using a group... Continue reading →
Midterm day – or, what do you do when you’re giving an exam?
Midterm day is here. This means two things. The first is that I get to find out if the students have... Continue reading →
Evangelicals? or how current events, class, and my writing on the American Revolution intertwine…
So we’re up to religion and the revolution! In other words, I’m home and we’re going to linger here for... Continue reading →
Thomas Kidd and Marco Rubio
Many thanks to Jessica Parr, who saw yesterday’s post and forwarded the tidbit that Thomas Kidd is serving as an advisor... Continue reading →
Religious Liberty
Today in class we’re going to be discussing one of my least favorite subjects: religious liberty. It’s my least favorite... Continue reading →
Politics and history
Wonderful post at Flat Hill analyzing Politifact’s checking of historical statements. Lots of meat here for our project later this... Continue reading →
A different answer to the same question…
Different people answer the same question in different ways. Thank heavens, because that’s what makes teaching interesting. Matthew Cressler at the... Continue reading →
Columbus and intellectual certainty
It’s widely known that Columbus made a lot of mistakes. Not just moral mistakes, but practical ones. He was not,... Continue reading →
Telling old stories
In class yesterday we covered the background necessary to give us a common vocabulary to talk about Christianity in American history.... Continue reading →
Thoughts on Star Wars and Christianity in Early America
As a get-to-know-you exercise in class today, I asked students to say whether they’d seen The Force Awakens over the holiday.... Continue reading →