Courses I Teach at LSU

HSS: Introduction to Research

HNRS2012: The Nineteenth Century

HIST2055: US History to 1865

HIST3117: Seminar on Digital History

HIST4055: The US Civil War

HIST4071: The Old South

HIST4072: The New South

HIST7951: Readings in Colonial American History

HIST7952: Readings in Nineteenth-Century US History

My Teaching Philosophy

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the several meanings of the word “learn” is “teach; to inform of something.” The linguistic link between these words highlights a deeper connection – people can teach others as they learn and, in return, learn when they teach. In my experiences, I have worked to bring these practices together by helping students seriously engage each other and their ideas. Solitary reading and reflection are vital, but in my experience, it is the almost-tactile practice of shaping and reshaping ideas, in conversation or print, that enables people to understand material fully. In order for students to articulate their own version of an argument or an idea, they must first take possession of it, and in that process, they reshape both themselves and the idea as they then present it to others. In my role as a teacher, I strive to create an atmosphere within my classes where students can do just that. In short, I try to provide an opportunity for students to be both learners and teachers.

Above all, I encourage my students to investigate how human action accounts for the changes we can see in our past, and I am hopeful that students will be empowered to realize their own ability to make positive changes in their worlds. Along the way, they learn how to read for biases and arguments, not just in history books but in diaries, letters, films, paintings, and music. Once they have the ability to interrogate “texts,” students can understand history, at least in part, as an act of interpretation, and this skill gives them the authority to make their own judgments about the meaning of the past. Further, as a discipline, history challenges students to think about people who created systems of values and beliefs that are often initially unfamiliar. By taking seriously the historical settings within which the people we study lived, most students come to appreciate why and how those people created the institutions and beliefs that defined them. In this way, history helps build the empathy muscles that are so essential to a civil society in a democracy like ours.