Exams or Reading responses?

A couple of semesters ago I taught a methods course, with the end goal a massive research paper. I used reading responses in that class rather than exams. I became enamored of the reading response. It seemed like they were engaging the materials in a more nuanced way than if I just expected them to read for class, without any kind of evaluation.



Now that I've employed reading responses for a couple of semesters, I am rethinking them for next semester, in two diametrically opposed ways. I don't like how students can fixate on a small section of the text and then it is totally unclear whether or not they read the whole text or just opened the book and read one page and wrote about that. Or else, the good students, to avoid this problem, end up writing many pages of text, which is not really the point either. I also worry that I am not giving sufficient amount of feedback on their responses. That said, I do think it is easier to deal with ideas and larger issues in writing than in multiple-choice tests. (I am teaching a 300 level history course and a 100 level course next semester). So here are my ideas:

1. There is George Gopen's idea in his article "Why So Many Bright Students and So Many Dull Papers?" where students write two page reading responses and then write one page responses to each other. I read the material, but do not grade it other than keeping track that they did it. Their reading journals are a big chunk of their end grade, but they only get that end grade. They can come in and talk to me if they are concerned about where their grade is headed, but otherwise I don't give any feedback. All of their feedback comes from their peers. This means they get real feedback every week, even when I am swamped and can't provide much more than a "good" or "this needs work." It also means they have a real audience and their ideas have consequences.

I am intrigued by this idea (mostly for my 300 level class), but there are a few things I am concerned about:

• Students will not call each other on problematic statements b/c they are all at the same basic level of development. For example, when a student came into class last week and said something along the lines of "Du Bois converted to communism, and communism is bad, so is Du Bois a bad guy?" most people agreed with the underlying assumption, with only one lone voice suggesting that maybe we shouldn't automatically dismiss communism in that fashion. 
• Students will be overwhelmed by the amount of writing required.
• Students have a research paper due at the end of the semester, and I was planning to have some of the weekly assignments be proposals, outlines, annotated bibliographies, etc. That means that the fundamental work of getting students to read won't be there. And they probably need my feedback on those assignments in order to prepare their papers. 

2. The other option I'm playing with is to dump reading responses and do surprise reading quizzes once a week or so. We give out common multiple choice quizzes in Paideia and the grades are all over the place. But it is a pretty clear evaluation of if students have comprehended the material. Or they could be short answer/id questions. But this gets back to my time in evaluating and responding.

Thoughts? How do you evaluate whether students do the reading? Is vibrant discussion (and/or socratic questioning) enough?

Do you do midterm/final/paper in 300 level classes? Or analytical papers/midterm/final in 100 level classes? Or analytical papers/reading responses/final?

Teaching W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk

This week and last in my Paideia course, I had the opportunity of choosing my own "open unit" text. This summer when asked, I looked around for a shortish, important text that I knew fairly well and choose The Souls of Black Folk.  I remembered from it his mind-blowing description of double consciousness, "two-ness" and The Veil that I had encountered as an undergrad. I remembered how many other books and memoirs have referenced those concepts. I remembered the debate with Booker T. Washington and the heart-rending discussion of the loss of his first-born. Seemed like a great text to introduce to undergrads.



What I forgot is how hard it would be for freshmen to read the text. Du Bois has a very florid, Victorian style and uses words that the freshmen are not familiar with.

So how am I dealing with these difficulties? I tried to listen to this roundtable with David Levering Lewis on How to Teach The Souls of Black Folk, but I found the sound trying. It seemed like it would be a great resource, so it is too bad about the sound. Then I decided to focus on a few key concepts (especially as I had to develop paper topics for last Friday's class. Their rough drafts are due this Friday and their final drafts due next Friday. With a library day Monday and presentations on library day Wednesday, last Friday was the first day we really started to delve into the text.

So...major concepts. Double Consciousness. The Veil. Library day I had them search for books and articles in groups that used the concepts. My point was that they were long-lasting and significant ideas that have persisted for a century and more. And that many African Americans still feel like they live with double consciousness and life within the Veil. In order to encourage the understanding of these concepts as conflict for the individual, but also a powerful insight--"gifted with second sight"--I called it a super power. One of my few black students pointed out that it is educated black people who have the super power. I thought that was perceptive, particularly because I think that educated black people, who move between white and black worlds more frequently, experience double consciousness more than black people who live primarily within black communities (even though whites still intrude in the form of tv and institutional power structures). One of my white students seemed affronted that Du Bois was suggesting blacks had this insight into the white and black sides of the Veil while whites do not.

I brought in some contemporary reactions to Double Consciousness and The Veil from this book, which is a collection of interviews and memoir responses to Du Bois's work. That somewhat helped open up the two concepts, although one class did better with it than the other.

The next thing I did was break them up into pairs and have them take on individual chapters. That allowed me to walk through the room and work with some of the struggling students on what their chapter meant. I told them to go to the back of the chapter first, as Du Bois tends to flourish in the beginning and explain by the end. We went through sentence by sentence and that seemed to help.

Monday I had the groups report on their findings. They seemed to get the main points when the text was divided up in this way. I even had a couple of students say they loved the lyricism and symbolism of certain chapters.

Here are the topics I decided to offer for their papers. Too many, I know, but so far at least one student has picked each one of them......

1. Souls of Black Folk was written in 1903, almost forty years after the Emancipation Proclamation. How had life for African Americans changed and stayed the same according to Du Bois?
2. What was the "Veil" in Du Bois' formulation and how did he use it throughout the book?
3. What was Du Bois' theory of education? Do you agree with him about the importance of a liberal arts education?
4. Explain the debate between Booker T. Washington and Du Bois. Which man do you agree with and why?
5. What was "Double Consciousness" to Du Bois? How did he experience it? How have others experienced it?
6. What did the "Sorrow Songs" mean to Du Bois? Why does he start each chapter with one?

P.S. I'd not thought before about how odd "Of the Coming of John" is in the context of Du Bois' great apologia for the liberal arts education. Here is a fictional piece about a young man profoundly changed by a liberal arts education, but there is no where he can fit--the north rejects him as much as the south. He finally returns to the small Georgian town of his birth, where he commits murder to save his sister from rape. The last sentence is "The world whistled in his ears"--he is lynched. How does that fit into the notion that the liberal arts educated Talented Tenth would help solve the "race problem"?

The After-Thought

             Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world-wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful dead to reap the harvest wonderful. (Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.) Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

The End

Someone should write a book about white people and race and title it "Ears Tingling with Truth."

Introduction to the Liberal Arts

I am teaching two sections of something called "Paideia" this semester. Paideia is Greek for "education" and this course introduces freshmen to the skills necessary for a successful liberal arts career--critical thinking, engagement with others, reading comprehension, and writing. The motto for the course is "seeking wisdom in community."

I'm excited and feeling a tad bit worried. We hit the ground running with a class session during orientation week--before classes have officially begun. According to orientation, we are responsible for 90% of the assessment, but only choose 1 of 7 + texts (7 book length texts plus course packet reading). The theme for the course is the tension between freedom and responsibility to community. We are reading



The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Summer read; changes every year)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Open text (I picked The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois)
Utopia
The Rake's Progress, music by Igor Stravinsky and book by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman accompanied by William Hogarth paintings

Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories by Amrita Pritam
Five Dialogues by Plato.
plus some things in the course reader, like a painting and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

I'm excited because I like the idea of introducing freshman to the wonderful world of a liberal arts education. I'm also excited because I had a somewhat similar course at the Honors College at Arizona State and it was by far one of my favorite courses there. I'mworried because ... well, obvious reasons, like engaging students who are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of reading and writing (the course has quite a reputation on campus--it is required for all incoming freshmen and there is some resistance there). Another reason is teaching writing effectively. I learned a lot in orientation from colleagues who've done a lot of writing instruction. I've done quite a bit myself, but I was never trained to do it.

Has anyone taught a course like this? Do you have any advice for writing instruction, on the particular works, engaging students, etc?

The Henrietta Lacks book is interesting on many straightforward (but still complicated) levels--genetics research, what is human, what are medical ethics, what right do we have to our body parts once they have left us, etc. But it is also interesting because the author is SUCH a privileged white person, invading the lives of poor black people for the sake of her research. She seems to be replicating some of what was done to the Lacks family, in the pursuit of the higher good of science (writing, in this case). I'm pondering how to help students engage with this part of the text.

Seminaring the Lecture Course

As followers of the blog know, I'm teaching US Intellectual History (1865 to the present) for the first time next semester. This is my first "lecture" course. I have taught seminar courses on historical methodology several times and I taught a unique hybrid of a course last year on South Africa, which incorporated films and special speakers.

I was chatting with our Director of Undergraduate Studies about the course yesterday and he encouraged me to seminar the lecture (in my words). He said its fine to go with my instincts to lead discussion, develop creative group activities, and in general work with, rather than against, the shorter attention spans of our current students. He said I wasn't to feel like I needed to get up and lecture twice a week, or even once a week, for the whole 75 minutes. I was already planning to have a day of discussion devoted to the primary sources, but also planning to spend at least part of the week lecturing. I enjoy lecturing and I think I am an engaging lecturer (part of my acting background). I think students also enjoy the passiveness of lecture--some learn from it and others do not. That said, I was inspired and relieved that the DUS said I could treat a 40 person lecture more like a seminar.

What ideas do you all have to keep students engaged and learning in lecture courses? Some of the things I have thought about are as follows:

--Having students submit weekly reading responses
--Having students peer critique each other's weekly reading responses.
--Lead discussion based on weekly reading responses
--Have students research the background of individual authors
--Have students develop the discussion questions for the week
--Each day, pull two students' names out of the hat to ask the discussion questions for the day (from my friend and colleague Sophie Roberts)
--Throw up a quote from the reading on the powerpoint to start off the discussion
--Encourage students to make connections between readings by putting together groups where one person is responsible for each reading.
--Debates
--Essays instead of content exams
--Group presentations

I know there are many more, but it's back to grading for me!

Reviewer Wanted

[Update: This book was claimed at 11:39 a.m. - TL]

Colleagues,

I am seeking a reviewer for Sara Schwebel's Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms (Vanderbilt University Press). The press blurb is immediately below. If interested write me at timothy.n.lacy-at-gmail.com.

- TL
-------------------------------------------------------

For more than three decades, the same children's historical novels have been taught across the United States. Honored for their literary quality and appreciated for their alignment with social studies curricula, the books have flourished as schools moved from whole-language to phonics and from student-centered learning to standardized testing.

Books like Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry stimulate children's imagination, transporting them into the American past and projecting them into an American future. As works of historical interpretation, however, many are startlingly out of step with current historiography and social sensibilities, especially with regard to race. Unlike textbooks, which are replaced on regular cycles and subjected to public tugs-of-war between the left and right, historical novels have simply--and quietly--endured. Taken individually, many present troubling interpretations of the American past. But embraced collectively, this classroom canon provides a rare pedagogical opportunity: it captures a range of interpretive voices across time and place, a kind of "people's history" far removed from today's state-sanctioned textbooks.

Teachers who employ historical novels in the classroom can help students recognize and interpret historical narrative as the product of research, analytical perspective, and the politics of the time. In doing so, they sensitize students to the ways in which the past is put to moral and ideological uses in the present.

Featuring separate chapters on American Indians, war, and slavery, Child-Sized History tracks the changes in how young readers are taught to conceptualize history and the American nation.

U.S. Intellectual History Survey

Ok, folks, I sent in my book requests, so I am that much closer to teaching the U.S. Intellectual History survey for the first time. After the jump, I've shared my week-by-week plan. AIT is American Intellectual Tradition, edited by Hollinger and Capper. I decided to adopt it after discussing it here on the blog and perusing an exam copy that Oxford was kind enough to send my way. My advisor (an undergraduate student of Hollinger) teaches a U.S. Intellectual History survey without AIT. I used some of his points, some of AIT's and some of my own. I'm curious to hear your reactions.

Week 1: Introduction and a few trends from American Intellectual History pre-1865

January 12: Freedom’s Ferment (blackboard)

Week 2: Reconstruction

January 17 Radical Republicans

January 19: Tiring of abolitionism—

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 1

Reading: Metaphysical Club, Chapters 1-5

Week 3: Rise of a Scientific Culture

January 24: Darwin

January 26: Social Sciences

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 2

Reading: Asa Gray, Selection from “Review of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species” (1860), AIT 6-11

            William Graham Sumner, “Sociology” (1881), AIT 27-36

            Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Selection from “A Plea for Culture” (1867) AIT 12-15

Charles Augustus Briggs, Selection from Biblical Study (1883), AIT 37-41

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Selections from Women and Economics (1898) AIT 96-102

Week 4: Pragmatism

January 31 Pragmatism

February 2: Discussion of Metaphysical Club

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 3

William James, “What Pragmatism Means” (1907), AIT 162-171

            Metaphysical Club, Chapters 6-9

Week 5: Progressivism

February 7: Progressivism in America

February 9: Progressivism across the Atlantic

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 4

Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements” (1892), AIT 126-131

            Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Compromise” blackboard

            Walter Lippmann, “Selection from Drift and Mastery (1914), AIT 172-176

Atlantic Crossings (blackboard)

Week 6: Reaching abroad

February 14: The US as a force in the world

February 16: Americans thinking internationally

Due before class Tuesday: Essay 1

Woodrow Wilson, “The Ideals of America” (1902) AIT 147-154

            John Dewey, “Philosophy and Democracy” (1918)

Margaret Mead, Selection from Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

Robin D. G. Kelley, “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–

1950,” Journal of American History 86 (1999): 1045–1077 (available online via www.jstor.org)

Week 7: Literature of the interwar era

            February 21—Wealthy of the 1920s

February 23—Proletarian of the 1930s

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 5

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as big as the Ritz (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/diamond/diamond.html)

Sidney Hook, “Communism without Dogmas” (1934)

            Selections from James Agee, Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (blackboard)

Week 8: Dialogue about Race

February 28: Civil Rights and pluralism

March 1: Economic Equality, Separate Spheres

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 6

W.E.B. Du Bois, Selection from Souls of Black Folk (1903), AIT 155-160

            Randolph Bourne, “Trans-National America” (1916), AIT 177-187

Metaphysical Club, Chapters 13-15

            Marcus Garvey (blackboard)

Week 9: Debating a Coal Miner’s strike

            March 6 & 8

Half of the class will meet in the Special Collections during each class period. The other half will meet in the regular classroom to watch a movie.

Due: Response 7 done in class

Spring Break March 13 and 15

Week 10:

March 20: Cold War

March 22: Rise of the University post WWII

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 8

Selection from Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (blackboard)

Oppenheimer, “The Sciences and Man’s Community”

Lionel Trilling, ‘On the Teaching of Modern Literature” (1961)

Thomas S. Kuhn, Selection from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Week 11: Civil Rights Discourse

March 27—Civil Rights

March 29--Nationalism

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 9

            Pauli Murray, The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet

Week 12: Race after the Civil Rights Movement

April 3: Comedy

            April 5: Oprah and Bill Cosby’s influence

Due before class Tuesday: Essay 2

Richard Pryor (blackboard)

            Edward W. Said, Selection from Orientalism (1978) 
            Ta-Nehisi Coates, “‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’ The Audacity of Bill Cosby’s Black 
            Conservatism” Atlantic Monthly (May 2008). (Available online at theatlantic.com)

Week 13: Psychology

            April 10: Rise of a Profession and Freud comes to America

            April 12: The transition from psychotherapy to cognitive science

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 10

Freud in America—selections from Terrible Honesty and Let Your Mind Alone, New Yorker (blackboard)

            Nancy J. Chodorow, “Gender, Relation, and Difference is Psychoanalytic Perspective” (1979)

Week 14: Feminism

April 17 Feminism as an idea

April 19 Feminism as a lived experience

            Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 11

Catharine MacKinnon, Selection from Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

            Susan Faludi, Selection from Backlash (blackboard)

Week 15: Culture Wars

            April 24: Multiculturalism

April 26: Post-modernism

Due before class Tuesday: Reading Response 12

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Selection from Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1990)

            Joan W. Scott, Selection from “The Evidence of Experience” (1991)

            The Conscience of Television, Lauren Zalaznick (2010) http://www.ted.com/talks/lauren_zalaznick.html

Week 16: Final Exam

historical truth

To continue my meditations on primary sources (or original historical sources) and the role of bias in historical writing, I offer this quote:

When thinking of evidence as a way of reconstructing the past, one ought to keep in mind that there are in fact different forms of historical truth that are being accessed through that evidence. This is by no means to say that there is no such thing as historical truth, much less its cognate opposite, that there is no such thing as historical falsehood. Both truth and falsehood most definitely exist but neither is homogenous or unitary. There are multiple forms of truth and of falsehood, even with regard to any single instance or event. Different forms of evidence are useful for accessing different forms of truth. Similarly, different modes of interpreting the same evidence will likewise generate different forms of truth.*

My students are discussing the chapter which this quote comes from in Reading Primary Sources next Monday. I'm curious to see how they respond to this paragraph.

The author, Devin O. Pendas, offers interesting parallel suggestions for interpreting oral testimony--hearing and listening. Hearing spots the factual/forensic claims, and listening marks things of experiential value.

*Devin O. Pendas, "Testimony" in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century History edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann. (London: Routledge, 2009), 231.

The role of bias in historical writing

Are your students enamored of bias? My students are. Everything that might be complicated about a historical source is traced to "bias"--why is an autobiography a troubling source? Because it's hard to separate bias from fact. Why is a novel a difficult source? Because it's hard to separate fact from opinion.

I'm having the students read a challenging tome entitled Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century History.  It is challenging because most of the authors depend upon post-modern theory for their suggestions on how to interpret primary sources. I think the students, if they are unsure what the text is saying, depend upon prior understanding and that screams to look for bias!

This is bugging me for two reasons.
One is that I just read "Primary Sources in History: Breaking Through the Myths" (see my post about it here) and one of the first myths is "historians use a 'sourcing heuristic' to evaluate bias and reliability." The author, Keith Barton, quotes Sean Lang, that "historians do not ask 'Is this source biased?' (which suggests the possibility of unbiased sources), but rather 'What is this source's bias, and how does it add to our picture of the past?'" In Reading Primary Sources, the editors, Benjamin Ziemann and Miriam Dobson, argue that the concept of bias "should be scrapped because it is impossible to get round the structural patterns and material elements of texts which every source genre imposes in a different way. Rather than trying to unearth the hidden but distorted meaning the author has invested in a text, historians should aim to focus on the specific mediality and the inherent structure which are provided by every genre of text."

The second reason it bugs me is because it feels like a parroted response rather than a thought-through one.

I think that this love of "bias" arises from students' discomfort with relativism and the possibility that we cannot know the full and complete "truth" through historical inquiry. I think it also arises because it is easily grasped--look in a source for bias and if you find it, throw it out.

I was very proud of one of my students on Monday, though. He was part of a group presenting on Benjamin Roth's The Great Depression: A Diary and one of his classmates asked if Roth was such a biased Republican whether the diary was worthwhile as a source. The student answered that it depended on what question was being asked of the source (yay! that was the point for the day!). His groupmates immediately replied that, in addition, it was a worthwhile source because there was a lot of objective facts in the diary that could be separated from Roth's bias (sigh).

What do you think is the role of bias in historical writing? How do your students think about it? And is it ok to write about one's current students in a public blog post?

A difficult balance

I'm reading Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get it Published as I prepare my book proposal. The authors Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato raise a couple of points that I find very difficult to balance. One is that a  way to tell great non-fiction is by what is left on the cutting room floor. The second is that you can only argue from the facts on the page, not the ones in your head (or left on the floor). 

I tend to over-write (my dissertation was 800+ pages long, which was due to over-writing and also a very large topic), giving all the interesting facts and stories I found in my research. When I then edit it down to a reasonable length, I seem to leave out necessary facts for my thesis. Maybe it is that readers always want more than you can give them, but I think it's also because I bounce back and forth between extremes as I finally begin to settle into the middle path of good writing. Another problem is that I want my work to be primary-source driven instead of thesis-driven. I always want the people in my work to drive the article/book forward instead of my authorial voice. That last part is a combination of my personality (which relies heavily on synthesis) and being a white girl doing black history. But every standard of good writing wants the authorial voice to come forward.

One of my other problems I have is that I always have a reason for why I include a certain factoid or anecdote. I may not always tell you what it is (trying to cut down on length) and it may not drive forward the primary thesis, but I always have a reason. So just asking me to justify every quote does not necessarily help me cut down on the number of quotes I use. However, I think that Rabiner and Fortunato's argument rules in Chapter 5 are going to help me as I continue to work on offering nuanced, critical writing that also does not lose the narrative drive. I also think I'm going to share that chapter with my students in my historical methods class as they learn how to write an argument. I usually have them diagram the argument of a historical essay, but I think the combination of Rabiner and Fortunato with diagraming an article will work better than the article alone.

A difficult balance

I'm reading Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get it Published as I prepare my book proposal. The authors Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato raise a couple of points that I find very difficult to balance. One is that a  way to tell great non-fiction is by what is left on the cutting room floor. The second is that you can only argue from the facts on the page, not the ones in your head (or left on the floor). 

I tend to over-write (my dissertation was 800+ pages long, which was due to over-writing and also a very large topic), giving all the interesting facts and stories I found in my research. When I then edit it down to a reasonable length, I seem to leave out necessary facts for my thesis. Maybe it is that readers always want more than you can give them, but I think it's also because I bounce back and forth between extremes as I finally begin to settle into the middle path of good writing. Another problem is that I want my work to be primary-source driven instead of thesis-driven. I always want the people in my work to drive the article/book forward instead of my authorial voice. That last part is a combination of my personality (which relies heavily on synthesis) and being a white girl doing black history. But every standard of good writing wants the authorial voice to come forward.

One of my other problems I have is that I always have a reason for why I include a certain factoid or anecdote. I may not always tell you what it is (trying to cut down on length) and it may not drive forward the primary thesis, but I always have a reason. So just asking me to justify every quote does not necessarily help me cut down on the number of quotes I use. However, I think that Rabiner and Fortunato's argument rules in Chapter 5 are going to help me as I continue to work on offering nuanced, critical writing that also does not lose the narrative drive. I also think I'm going to share that chapter with my students in my historical methods class as they learn how to write an argument. I usually have them diagram the argument of a historical essay, but I think the combination of Rabiner and Fortunato with diagraming an article will work better than the article alone.

The American Intellectual Tradition?

Do you use Hollinger and Capper's The American Intellectual Tradition sourcebook in your courses? Why or why not?

There were some holes in the edition I had previously examined, so I hadn't planned to use it. But I see there is a new edition out (Oct 2010) and I am going to request an exam copy. I was curious if anyone else has opinions about it.

Thanks!

The American Intellectual Tradition?

Do you use Hollinger and Capper's The American Intellectual Tradition sourcebook in your courses? Why or why not?

There were some holes in the edition I had previously examined, so I hadn't planned to use it. But I see there is a new edition out (Oct 2010) and I am going to request an exam copy. I was curious if anyone else has opinions about it.

Thanks!

"My Psychopharmacologist and I"

I'm planning on doing a section on psychiatry and psychology in the United States for my US Intellectual History survey in the spring. I haven't decided yet whether to make it a theme that we touch on a few times throughout the semester or whether it should be a separate week or two. My plan right now is to start with James, move to Terrible Honesty and Freud in America, then show a Woody Allen film (probably Annie Hall), then talk about the current debate over the effectiveness of anti-depressants (there is a nice opinion piece with responses in last week's NY Times). The title of this post comes from an amazing musical titled Next To Normal that is about a woman with bipolar disorder and the weight of her disease on her family. I'll probably play the song "My Psychopharmacologist and I" for the students. I agree more with the New York Times opinion piece about the importance and effectiveness of pharmacology and psychiatry, but I find the emotions of Next to Normal intensely powerful. The lyrics are after the jump:



DAN
Who's crazy, the husband or wife?
Who's crazy to live their whole life
Believing that somehow things aren't as bazaar as they are?

Who's crazy, the one who can't cope?
Or maybe, the one who'll still hope?
The one who sees doctors or the one who just waits in the car?

And I was a wild twenty-five,
And I loved a wife so alive.
But now I believe I would settle for one who can drive.

DR. MADDEN
...The round blue ones with food, but not with the oblong white ones.
The white ones with the round yellow ones, but not with the trapezoidal green ones.
Split the green ones into thirds with a tiny chisel, use a mortar and pestle to grind…

DIANA
My psychopharmacologist and I.
It's like an odd romance:
Intense and very intimate, we do our dance.

My psychopharmacologist and I.
Call it a lover's game.
He knows my deepest secrets.
I know his... name!

And though he'll never hold me
He'll always take my calls.
It's truly like he told me
Without a little lift, the ballerina falls.

CAST
Do doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Bipolar depressive with delusional episodes.
Sixteen year history of medication.
Adjustment after one week.

DIANA
I've got less anxiety but I have headaches, blurry vision, and I can't feel my toes.

CAST
Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh.

DR. MADDEN
So we'll try again. Eventually, we'll get it right.

DIANA
Not a very exact science, is it?

CAST
Zoloft and Paxil and Buspar and Xanex, Depacon, Chronaphin, Ambien, Prozac,
Ativan calms me when I see the bills.
These are a few of my favorite pills.

DIANA
Ooh, Thank you, doctor, Valium is my favorite color. How'd you know?

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Second adjustment after three weeks.
Delusions less frequent, but depressive state worse.

DIANA
I'm nauseous and I'm constipated, completely lost my appetite and gained six pounds, which, you know, is just not fair.

CAST
May cause the following side effects, one or more:
Dizziness, drowsiness, sexual dysfunction,

GROUP 1
Headaches and tremors, nightmares and seizures.

GROUP 2
(unknown), constipation, nervous laughter, palpitations,

BOTH
Anxiousness, anger, exhaustion, insomnia, irritability,
Nausea, vomiting,

DIANA
Odd and alarming sexual feelings

CAST
OH! And one last thing:
Use may be fatal.
Use may be fatal.
Use may be fatal.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Third adjustment after five weeks.
Reports continue: mild anxiety and some lingering depression.

DIANA
I now can't feel my fingers or my toes. I sweat profusely for no reason.
Fortunately, I have absolutely no desire for sex.
Although, whether that's the medicine or the marriage is anybody's guess.

DR. MADDEN
I'm sure it's the medicine.

DIANA
Oh, thank you, that's very sweet, but my husband's waiting in the car.

DAN
Who's crazy, the one who's half gone?
Or maybe, the one who holds on?
Remembering when she was twenty, and brilliant and bold.
And I was so young, and so dumb.
And now I am old.

DAN
And she was wicked and wired.
The sex was simply inspired.
Now there's no sex, she's depressed
And me, I'm just tired, tired, tired, tired
Who’s crazy
The one who’s uncured
Or maybe the one who’s implored
The one who has treatment, or the one who just deals with the pain

DIANA
And though he'll never hold me
He'll always taken my calls
It's truly like he told me
Without a lift the ballerina falls.
My psychopharmacologist and I...
He’s at every sight I lie
Without you I die
My psychopharmacologist and I


DAN
They say love is blind...
But believe me, love is insane.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Seven weeks.

DIANA
I don't feel like myself. I mean, I don't feel anything.

DR. MADDEN
Hm. Patient stable.


**Picture from the NY Times Review of Next to Normal

"My Psychopharmacologist and I"

I'm planning on doing a section on psychiatry and psychology in the United States for my US Intellectual History survey in the spring. I haven't decided yet whether to make it a theme that we touch on a few times throughout the semester or whether it should be a separate week or two. My plan right now is to start with James, move to Terrible Honesty and Freud in America, then show a Woody Allen film (probably Annie Hall), then talk about the current debate over the effectiveness of anti-depressants (there is a nice opinion piece with responses in last week's NY Times). The title of this post comes from an amazing musical titled Next To Normal that is about a woman with bipolar disorder and the weight of her disease on her family. I'll probably play the song "My Psychopharmacologist and I" for the students. I agree more with the New York Times opinion piece about the importance and effectiveness of pharmacology and psychiatry, but I find the emotions of Next to Normal intensely powerful. The lyrics are after the jump:



DAN
Who's crazy, the husband or wife?
Who's crazy to live their whole life
Believing that somehow things aren't as bazaar as they are?

Who's crazy, the one who can't cope?
Or maybe, the one who'll still hope?
The one who sees doctors or the one who just waits in the car?

And I was a wild twenty-five,
And I loved a wife so alive.
But now I believe I would settle for one who can drive.

DR. MADDEN
...The round blue ones with food, but not with the oblong white ones.
The white ones with the round yellow ones, but not with the trapezoidal green ones.
Split the green ones into thirds with a tiny chisel, use a mortar and pestle to grind…

DIANA
My psychopharmacologist and I.
It's like an odd romance:
Intense and very intimate, we do our dance.

My psychopharmacologist and I.
Call it a lover's game.
He knows my deepest secrets.
I know his... name!

And though he'll never hold me
He'll always take my calls.
It's truly like he told me
Without a little lift, the ballerina falls.

CAST
Do doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Bipolar depressive with delusional episodes.
Sixteen year history of medication.
Adjustment after one week.

DIANA
I've got less anxiety but I have headaches, blurry vision, and I can't feel my toes.

CAST
Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh.

DR. MADDEN
So we'll try again. Eventually, we'll get it right.

DIANA
Not a very exact science, is it?

CAST
Zoloft and Paxil and Buspar and Xanex, Depacon, Chronaphin, Ambien, Prozac,
Ativan calms me when I see the bills.
These are a few of my favorite pills.

DIANA
Ooh, Thank you, doctor, Valium is my favorite color. How'd you know?

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Second adjustment after three weeks.
Delusions less frequent, but depressive state worse.

DIANA
I'm nauseous and I'm constipated, completely lost my appetite and gained six pounds, which, you know, is just not fair.

CAST
May cause the following side effects, one or more:
Dizziness, drowsiness, sexual dysfunction,

GROUP 1
Headaches and tremors, nightmares and seizures.

GROUP 2
(unknown), constipation, nervous laughter, palpitations,

BOTH
Anxiousness, anger, exhaustion, insomnia, irritability,
Nausea, vomiting,

DIANA
Odd and alarming sexual feelings

CAST
OH! And one last thing:
Use may be fatal.
Use may be fatal.
Use may be fatal.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Third adjustment after five weeks.
Reports continue: mild anxiety and some lingering depression.

DIANA
I now can't feel my fingers or my toes. I sweat profusely for no reason.
Fortunately, I have absolutely no desire for sex.
Although, whether that's the medicine or the marriage is anybody's guess.

DR. MADDEN
I'm sure it's the medicine.

DIANA
Oh, thank you, that's very sweet, but my husband's waiting in the car.

DAN
Who's crazy, the one who's half gone?
Or maybe, the one who holds on?
Remembering when she was twenty, and brilliant and bold.
And I was so young, and so dumb.
And now I am old.

DAN
And she was wicked and wired.
The sex was simply inspired.
Now there's no sex, she's depressed
And me, I'm just tired, tired, tired, tired
Who’s crazy
The one who’s uncured
Or maybe the one who’s implored
The one who has treatment, or the one who just deals with the pain

DIANA
And though he'll never hold me
He'll always taken my calls
It's truly like he told me
Without a lift the ballerina falls.
My psychopharmacologist and I...
He’s at every sight I lie
Without you I die
My psychopharmacologist and I


DAN
They say love is blind...
But believe me, love is insane.

DR. MADDEN
Goodman, Diana: Seven weeks.

DIANA
I don't feel like myself. I mean, I don't feel anything.

DR. MADDEN
Hm. Patient stable.


**Picture from the NY Times Review of Next to Normal

TGIF!

A new reason to Thank (fill in your personal [   ] here) it's Friday--I'm going to start blogging regularly on this day! I can sense the palpable excitement among the S-USIH ranks and visitors. :-) (TGIF won out over a joke about moving from being an irregular blogger to a regular one.....but I still couldn't help mentioning it. Hahahaha).

As this intro attests, I am more breezy than my fellow bloggers. I guess having many different viewpoints and styles is one of the advantages of a group blog. I will be interested to hear your reactions to my thoughts, and hope that my style suits frequent readers and brings new visitors to the site.

A few things about me--I study African American Intellectual History, particularly the notions of Internationalism and Interracialism, during the 1920s-1930s. I argue that the interwar period is a distinct era, rather than a period that should be attached to the "nadir" (which began after Reconstruction ended) or stretched into the Long Civil Rights Movement. The generation that came of age in this era were born into Jim Crow and the solutions to racial struggles they developed reflected that. Black protest was certainly present during the era, but state-sanctioned and independent violence suppressed it and the media did not cover it. At the same time, I think black history should encompass more than the struggle. For instance, the presence of African Americans in Higher Education grew exponentially, faster even than the rest of the country. Blacks and whites viewed Education as a potential way out of racial conflict, but different individuals meant very different things by that. And sometimes, education was about jobs and culture-creation as much as it was about struggle.

My work tends to be story based, drawing ideas up out of experience and writings.I use a great deal of primary sources, balancing writings from the period with letters, diaries, and other archival sources.

In terms of what I will use this blogging space for--I am hesitant to present too much of my research since I am almost unpublished (hopefully that will change dramatically over the summer). So I plan to combine my historical reflections on contemporary events and essays with a lot of discussion of teaching. Whereas research needs to be protected on some level for publication, particularly for us young scholars, I believe teaching only improves when methods and experiences are aired and debated. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about teaching in response to my own!

TGIF!

A new reason to Thank (fill in your personal [   ] here) it's Friday--I'm going to start blogging regularly on this day! I can sense the palpable excitement among the S-USIH ranks and visitors. :-) (TGIF won out over a joke about moving from being an irregular blogger to a regular one.....but I still couldn't help mentioning it. Hahahaha).

As this intro attests, I am more breezy than my fellow bloggers. I guess having many different viewpoints and styles is one of the advantages of a group blog. I will be interested to hear your reactions to my thoughts, and hope that my style suits frequent readers and brings new visitors to the site.

A few things about me--I study African American Intellectual History, particularly the notions of Internationalism and Interracialism, during the 1920s-1930s. I argue that the interwar period is a distinct era, rather than a period that should be attached to the "nadir" (which began after Reconstruction ended) or stretched into the Long Civil Rights Movement. The generation that came of age in this era were born into Jim Crow and the solutions to racial struggles they developed reflected that. Black protest was certainly present during the era, but state-sanctioned and independent violence suppressed it and the media did not cover it. At the same time, I think black history should encompass more than the struggle. For instance, the presence of African Americans in Higher Education grew exponentially, faster even than the rest of the country. Blacks and whites viewed Education as a potential way out of racial conflict, but different individuals meant very different things by that. And sometimes, education was about jobs and culture-creation as much as it was about struggle.

My work tends to be story based, drawing ideas up out of experience and writings.I use a great deal of primary sources, balancing writings from the period with letters, diaries, and other archival sources.

In terms of what I will use this blogging space for--I am hesitant to present too much of my research since I am almost unpublished (hopefully that will change dramatically over the summer). So I plan to combine my historical reflections on contemporary events and essays with a lot of discussion of teaching. Whereas research needs to be protected on some level for publication, particularly for us young scholars, I believe teaching only improves when methods and experiences are aired and debated. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about teaching in response to my own!

Pedagogy: A Theme for the US Intellectual History Survey

I am teaching the US Intellectual History survey for the first time in Spring 2012. I've been thinking about what unifying theme I want to present to students. It's become my conviction that we need a few ideas that we keep returning to over the course of the semester, rather than an attempt to cover as much material as possible. When I first started teaching, I wanted to give my students all the information which I had discovered since coming to grad school--the kind of stuff that I read and went, "how did I not know that before?" But I realized that themes developed based around my interests, anyway, and it was usually those themes that were remembered, through the sheer force of repetition.

What themes have you used in the survey? I had been thinking about things like pragmatism, pluralism, changing ideas of conservative/liberal, but I had a bright thought this morning and would like your opinion.

What if I arranged the lectures around idea transmissions and national conversations? I would want students to ask the questions--how did people have national conversations before the internet? What did they talk about? How did the method of transmission influence the content of the discussion? We could spend the last few weeks looking at blogs, newspapers and magazines online, and social media. I could then ask the question on the final--has the internet fundamentally transformed what Americans talk about? Why or why not?

I had this thought reading Louis Menand's discussion of the "Value of College in America" in the most recent New Yorker. I am thinking of assigning the article for students to begin to think about college as a form of idea transmission and center for dialogue. (On a side, more relevant note, what did you all think of the article?)

I've also been thinking a lot about American literature. When I took my European Intellectual History comp, I read a lot of literature/philosophy. Less so for my US Intellectual History comp. Do you ever assign novels?

Finally, do you assign monographs in an undergrad class? I feel like I should assign more than a week for undergrads to read a whole book, but if I assign a monograph, we may only be discussing that topic for a single week. Perhaps it is better to assign article length primary and secondary sources and tie them to the specific discussion of each class meeting?

P.S. The image is from Menand's article in the New Yorker.

Pedagogy: A Theme for the US Intellectual History Survey

I am teaching the US Intellectual History survey for the first time in Spring 2012. I've been thinking about what unifying theme I want to present to students. It's become my conviction that we need a few ideas that we keep returning to over the course of the semester, rather than an attempt to cover as much material as possible. When I first started teaching, I wanted to give my students all the information which I had discovered since coming to grad school--the kind of stuff that I read and went, "how did I not know that before?" But I realized that themes developed based around my interests, anyway, and it was usually those themes that were remembered, through the sheer force of repetition.

What themes have you used in the survey? I had been thinking about things like pragmatism, pluralism, changing ideas of conservative/liberal, but I had a bright thought this morning and would like your opinion.

What if I arranged the lectures around idea transmissions and national conversations? I would want students to ask the questions--how did people have national conversations before the internet? What did they talk about? How did the method of transmission influence the content of the discussion? We could spend the last few weeks looking at blogs, newspapers and magazines online, and social media. I could then ask the question on the final--has the internet fundamentally transformed what Americans talk about? Why or why not?

I had this thought reading Louis Menand's discussion of the "Value of College in America" in the most recent New Yorker. I am thinking of assigning the article for students to begin to think about college as a form of idea transmission and center for dialogue. (On a side, more relevant note, what did you all think of the article?)

I've also been thinking a lot about American literature. When I took my European Intellectual History comp, I read a lot of literature/philosophy. Less so for my US Intellectual History comp. Do you ever assign novels?

Finally, do you assign monographs in an undergrad class? I feel like I should assign more than a week for undergrads to read a whole book, but if I assign a monograph, we may only be discussing that topic for a single week. Perhaps it is better to assign article length primary and secondary sources and tie them to the specific discussion of each class meeting?

P.S. The image is from Menand's article in the New Yorker.

Off-Topic Methodology Bleg: Teaching History Backwards

For about a month I have been pondering a radical revision to the way I teach U.S. survey courses. After witnessing students becoming more interested in the subject matter as we move closer and closer to the present, I have been wondering about getting this material to them earlier. For awhile I thought about a substantial introductory teaser unit. Perhaps by showing a solid documentary (e.g. *The Weather Underground* or *Fog of War*) and working over material from the 1960s to the present, for a few weeks, I might get them sufficiently excited to understand the virtue of working from the distant past to recent times. But I'm not happy about the potential for an abrupt content change in moving from the 1990s to, say, the 1890s. This has led me to think about conducting an entire twentieth-century survey, next year, in reverse chronological order. Yes, I may teach a survey backwards.

There are two reasons for this. First, something internal and theoretical. I am intensely interested in the notion of an "archaeology of the present." To me, this is real, relevant (I see you wincing), and a radical change from the way most history is taught. It's fun to work from the news backwards.

My second reason for considering a reverse-chronological presentation is external. For students, meaning first-years and uninterested upperclass folks, I am convinced that the best way to show the 'relevance' (again, that dreaded word---for some) of history is to demonstrate that remnants of the past exist in everyday life. When I say everyday I mean materially and intellectually. I really do think that tracing ideas and topics backwards will give students a firm, personal, and empirical anchor for thinking about the past. I believe, or hope (depending on my mood), that this will excite those not previously enthused. Perhaps this is where I'm riding the line of gimmickry. My feeling is that this approach gives the students an anchor in things they know---never a bad idea when trying to stimulate skeptics. Anecdotally, I asked students in one of my upper-division courses for their reaction to this idea. Around 90 percent thought it could work, though one said she had a high school teacher who tried this and failed miserably.

Methodologically, I am aware of the pros (and here) and cons (and here). By following the links, particularly number two of my 'pros', you'll see that what I am proposing is not new; the idea dates to around 1971, and probably earlier. As for the cons, of course I don't believe I will get fired for this---or else I would not consider the change. Fears of traditionalists history professors and methodologically conservative skeptics also won't dissuade me.

I understand, however, the fears of presentism. In the study by Misco and Paterson, titled " An Old Fad of Great Promise: Reverse Chronology History Teaching in Social Studies Classes" (again, link #2 in the pros above), I think that some of their proposals border on the fallacy of presentism. You can't simply study history in its full breadth and contextual uncertainty by working backwards from the interests of students. I think the draw in teaching history backwards is viewing causation as something of a mystery, as an inductive process, which linear (i.e. textbookish) presentations avoid---to their detriment.

If I don't do this, it will be because I decide either (a) it won't work or (b) I don't have the time, this coming year, to institute the change with the necessary energy. I suspect (b) will rule my decision, but am curious to hear from others who have either done this or thought about it.

So here are my questions for USIH folks: How will this fail? What are the philosophical problems with teaching history inductively? What are the methodological issues? What am I downplaying or not considering? - TL

Off-Topic Methodology Bleg: Teaching History Backwards

For about a month I have been pondering a radical revision to the way I teach U.S. survey courses. After witnessing students becoming more interested in the subject matter as we move closer and closer to the present, I have been wondering about getting this material to them earlier. For awhile I thought about a substantial introductory teaser unit. Perhaps by showing a solid documentary (e.g. *The Weather Underground* or *Fog of War*) and working over material from the 1960s to the present, for a few weeks, I might get them sufficiently excited to understand the virtue of working from the distant past to recent times. But I'm not happy about the potential for an abrupt content change in moving from the 1990s to, say, the 1890s. This has led me to think about conducting an entire twentieth-century survey, next year, in reverse chronological order. Yes, I may teach a survey backwards.

There are two reasons for this. First, something internal and theoretical. I am intensely interested in the notion of an "archaeology of the present." To me, this is real, relevant (I see you wincing), and a radical change from the way most history is taught. It's fun to work from the news backwards.

My second reason for considering a reverse-chronological presentation is external. For students, meaning first-years and uninterested upperclass folks, I am convinced that the best way to show the 'relevance' (again, that dreaded word---for some) of history is to demonstrate that remnants of the past exist in everyday life. When I say everyday I mean materially and intellectually. I really do think that tracing ideas and topics backwards will give students a firm, personal, and empirical anchor for thinking about the past. I believe, or hope (depending on my mood), that this will excite those not previously enthused. Perhaps this is where I'm riding the line of gimmickry. My feeling is that this approach gives the students an anchor in things they know---never a bad idea when trying to stimulate skeptics. Anecdotally, I asked students in one of my upper-division courses for their reaction to this idea. Around 90 percent thought it could work, though one said she had a high school teacher who tried this and failed miserably.

Methodologically, I am aware of the pros (and here) and cons (and here). By following the links, particularly number two of my 'pros', you'll see that what I am proposing is not new; the idea dates to around 1971, and probably earlier. As for the cons, of course I don't believe I will get fired for this---or else I would not consider the change. Fears of traditionalists history professors and methodologically conservative skeptics also won't dissuade me.

I understand, however, the fears of presentism. In the study by Misco and Paterson, titled " An Old Fad of Great Promise: Reverse Chronology History Teaching in Social Studies Classes" (again, link #2 in the pros above), I think that some of their proposals border on the fallacy of presentism. You can't simply study history in its full breadth and contextual uncertainty by working backwards from the interests of students. I think the draw in teaching history backwards is viewing causation as something of a mystery, as an inductive process, which linear (i.e. textbookish) presentations avoid---to their detriment.

If I don't do this, it will be because I decide either (a) it won't work or (b) I don't have the time, this coming year, to institute the change with the necessary energy. I suspect (b) will rule my decision, but am curious to hear from others who have either done this or thought about it.

So here are my questions for USIH folks: How will this fail? What are the philosophical problems with teaching history inductively? What are the methodological issues? What am I downplaying or not considering? - TL