At Wilkes University, I teach a range of courses for history majors and non-majors alike.  My upper-level courses examine American history from the colonial period through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. I also contribute to Wilkes’s concentration in Public History, including both offering specific courses and providing students in my upper-level courses with the opportunity to experiment with public-facing history projects.

Survey courses offered each semester:

• HST 101: Historical Foundations of the Modern World – A core requirement for all Wilkes students, this course examines the development of modern Europe and its relationship to the world.
• HST 125: U.S. History to 1877, with WGS credit – This course considers the history of the North American continent from the meeting of indigenous societies and Columbus through Reconstruction. Students will examine differences in gender, race, class, ethnicity, and other systems of power and authority, and this class is eligible for the Women’s and Gender Studies minor.

Upper-level courses taught since 2019:

• HST 211: Introduction to Public History – A core requirement for Wilkes students with public and digital history concentrations, this course introduces students to how public history differs from “academic” history, who makes it happen and how, and who consumes it.  First offered during the Fall 2020 semester, HST 211 students collected and preserved materials for a “Wilkes in 2020” collection that will be donated to the Wilkes University Archives.
• HST 331: Colonial America, with WGS credit – This course explores interactions across a “vast early America” that included indigenous, European, and African peoples in places like the Caribbean, the East Coast, and the Southwest from the 1500s through the mid-1700s. Students will examine differences in gender, race, class, ethnicity, and other systems of power and authority, and this class is eligible for the Women’s and Gender Studies minor.
• HST 332: The New Nation, with WGS credit – HST 332 looks at the political, economic, social, and cultural developments in the United States from the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783 through the establishment of an industrialized North and a cotton-producing South, roughly 1840.  Students will examine differences in gender, race, class, ethnicity, and other systems of power and authority, and this class is eligible for the Women’s and Gender Studies minor.
• HST 398: The History and Memory of the American Civil War, with WGS credit– This course examines the American Civil War through a broad lens, starting with the U.S. Constitution and ending with current debates about monuments and commemoration.  Students will examine differences in gender, race, class, ethnicity, and other systems of power and authority, and this class is eligible for the Women’s and Gender Studies minor.
• HST 397: Senior Capstone Seminar – Students select topics, develop research questions, and conduct research on relevant primary and secondary sources.  By the end of the semester, each student-historian has produced a significant piece of writing as well as presented their research findings to a public audience.

At the University of Connecticut, I taught the survey course, “United States History to 1877,” and an upper-division course, “Colonial America, 1492-1763.”  Both of these were “writing-intensive” courses, in which the students were required to write and revise a minimum of 15 pages.

During the spring 2018 semester, students in my “Colonial America, 1492-1763” upper-level course contributed to a course blog.  You can read their contributions at Colonial American Histories.