Providing a Path for Lifelong Learning
Tara and John get together to discuss their upper division classes in the spring of 2018. Tara is teaching classes on the American Revolution and the history of American slavery, while John is teaching a class on popular sport in a modern, global context. The conversation moves on to some pedagogy pretty quickly: how do… Continue reading Centre Trail Podcast Episode 11: Sport and Slavery
Tara and John get together to talk about the intensive term coming to an end. Warning: we are very tired in this episode! John talks about his recent op-ed in the “Made by History” blog in the Washington Post about American policy in East Asia, and Tara talks about the steampunk genre and its relationship… Continue reading Centre Trail Podcast Episode 10: Steampunk and Talking to the Public
Tara and John return for our first podcast in 2018 to talk about how they utilize the intensive “CentreTerm” class as a platform for experimenting with topics and pedagogy. Tara discusses her brand new class on alternative histories and John discusses his class on history and video games, which he is teaching for the third… Continue reading Centre Trail Podcast 9: Experimenting in Intensive Winter Terms
I'm teaching a Centre Term class on Counterfactual and Alternate history. We spend our time asking "What if?" and reading short stories and articles that also ask this question. By the end of the term, my students will write their own alt hist short story and a historian's counterfactual argument. Asking "what if?" is a… Continue reading What If?
We hand things over pretty quickly to some alumni from our program! We recently had homecoming at Centre and at a History program coffee get-together we had some lovely conversations with people roaming the earth with Centre College degrees in History. We wish we could have recorded everyone, but we do have great chats here… Continue reading Centre Trail Podcast 8: Homecoming!
There have been a number of great pieces on the history of sport star activism in the wake of NFL player protests. I recognize that this is a very charged topic and I'm not here to tell you what to think. I do, however, think historical context can always help us understand our world. These… Continue reading NFL Kneeling in Historical Context
John and Tara got together before Fall Break and all the wild times that entails (eh…. grading, actually) to talk about Columbus Day and Northern Ireland’s Marching Season. What kind of factors motivate people to commemorate certain events or people, and why do we choose to use public space to do it?
If your facebook feed is anything like mine, you are seeing a number of memes about Columbus Day. This is one of the more popular: And also: Both of which make me laugh and make good points about the age of European exploration. There are a host of other memes about the holiday from the… Continue reading Why Columbus Day, Anyway?
John and Tara get together to talk about author Colson Whitehead’s visit to Centre's campus this past week and why his award-winning novel The Underground Railroad is so interesting as a contribution to wider historical discussion, our preparation for the semester to come, and some historical context for discussion of the Second Amendment to the… Continue reading Centre Trail Podcast 6: Colson Whitehead visits campus, the spring beckons
Last week the Centre College History Program hosted the first of three events this autumn featuring members of our program and colleagues invited from other programs to discuss large historical questions with our students. We chose as our first topic the question of what roles public monuments play in society and how different communities have… Continue reading Past and Present: Public Monuments
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