Shit I Have to Teach in Twenty Minutes

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob sit down with Dr. Alan Mikhail to discuss teaching the early Ottoman Empire.   Dr. Mikhail is the Chance Family Professor of History at Yale University. His fields of interest include the Middle East, the Early Modern Muslim World, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Early Modern History, Environmental History and the History of Medicine. He is the author of many award winning...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Chrisitina Snyder sits down with Eric and Rob to discuss ways to teach about the Age of Jackson.   Dr. Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University.  She is an historian of colonialism, race, and slavery, with a focus on North America from the pre-contact era through the late nineteenth century.  Christina shares ideas from her award winning book, G...

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob are joined by Dr. Peter Kastor to discuss ways to teach about the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.   Dr. Kastor is the Samuel K. Eddy Endowed Professor of History and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.  He studies the history of politics, policymaking, and culture in the United States. He focuses much of his work on the half-century followi...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Kidada WIlliams sits down with Eric and Rob to discuss ways to teach about the Reconstruction era in the United States.  Dr. Williams is a history professor at Wayne State University and she delves into the lives of African American victims and survivors of racist violence. Her work, I Saw Death Coming, was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction and won the...

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric are joined by Dr. Cathleen Cahill to discuss ways to teach the women’s suffrage movement in the United States.  Cathleen is the Walter L. Ferree and Helen P. Ferree Professor of Middle-American History at Penn State.  She begins by urging teachers to conceptualize this topic beyond the standard narrative that starts with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and ends wi...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Dan Barish returns to the podcast to discuss how teachers should teach about the late Qing Dynasty in China.  Dan is an Associate Professor of History and the Undergraduate Program Director at Baylor University.   First, he explains that teachers should begin their discussion about the decline of the Qing in the late 18th century and focus on internal problems that resulted fr...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Silvia Escanilla Huerta joins Eric and Rob to talk about the best ways to teach Colonial Latin American History.  Dr. Escanilla Huerta is a professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a scholar of Latin America, who was born and raised in Argentina. She specializes in the process of Independence in Peru and Bolivia, focusing on Indigenous Peoples and Political H...

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob sit down with Dr. Denver Brunsman to discuss teaching the American Revolution.  Denver is the History Department Chair at George Washington University and he has published and edited numerous books on the time period including the award winning, The Evil Necessity:  British Naval Impressment in the 18th-Century Atlantic World .  Denver begins by urging teachers to cha...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Michael Childers joins Eric and Rob to discuss how teachers can better incorporate environmental history in their courses.  Mike is an Associate Professor of history at Colorado State University and he is the co-editor of the University of Nebraska series Environment and Region in the American West and he is also the Associate Editor of the Western Historical Quarterly.  He ex...

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob visit with Dr. Steven Hirsch to discuss how to teach about Latin American revolutions in the 20th century.  Steve is a Professor of Practice and Global Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.   Steve begins by explaining that revolutionary movements reveal that Latin American nations consistently sought to overcome the negative legacy of colonialism on their so...

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob sit down with Dr. Laura Westhoff to discuss teaching the Progressive Era in the United States.  Laura is a Professor of History and former Department Chair at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.   Laura begins by framing the period as the “long progressive era” noting that the ideas that shaped both the movement and public policy stretched from the late 19th century...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Philip Deloria joins Eric and Rob to discuss how to teach Native American history in a U.S. History course.   He is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University.  He identifies three important concepts that teachers should consider to fully include Native American history in their courses.  First, he reminds us that American Indian people are still here...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Clarence Lang sits down with Eric and Rob to discuss how teachers can present a more complex and nuanced story of the Black freedom movement in modern U.S. history.   Clarence is the Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and a professor of African American Studies at Penn State.  His book, Grassroots at the Gateway:  Class Politics & Black Freedom Struggle in...

Send us Fan Mail Eric and Rob talk with Dr. Dan Barish who discusses how teachers can present the early Qing Dynasty in China to their students.  Dan is an Associate Professor of History and the Undergraduate Program Director at Baylor University.   He shares that teachers should begin with the big idea that the Qing is an inner Asian empire that has much in common with other early modern empires....

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric are joined by Dr. Jeremi Suri who shares his ideas on how teachers can best teach about the Cold War in their classrooms.  Jeremi is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.   He identifies three core concepts that teachers should consider when teaching about the Cold War.  First, he notes that much of the...

Send us Fan Mail Dr.  Raphael Njoku visits with Rob and Eric to discuss how teachers can explore African decolonization with their students.  Raphael is a Professor of African History and Culture at Idaho State University.  Raphael urges teachers to first define decolonization and identify the motives of the different stakeholders.  He also suggests that teachers analyze both the internal and exte...

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric are joined by Mike Butler who discusses how teachers can address the Lost Cause in their US History courses.  Mike is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of History and Humanities and the Department Chair at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.  Mike defines the Lost Cause as a movement whereby the South transformed a military defeat into a cultural victory.  In t...

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric visit with Craig Miller and discuss how to approach teaching World History.      Craig is a professor and Department Head of History and Political Science at Pennsylvania College of Technology.   He also serves as the Chief Reader for the AP World History: Modern exam.  Craig reassures teachers that they cannot be expected to know everything about World History and th...

Send us Fan Mail Lindsay Stallones Marshall joins Eric and Rob to consider three frameworks for teaching the history of the American West.  Lindsay is an Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University and the Co-Chair of the Western History Association’s Committee on Teaching and Public Education.  Lindsay suggests that teachers should consider the frameworks of both invasion and huma...

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric visit with Dr. Ed Ayers to discuss the most important concepts teachers should consider when teaching about the American Civil War.  Ed is the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond.  He is one of the nation’s leading scholars on the Civil War and is the Executive Director of New American History .  Ed discus...

Send us Fan Mail Rob and Eric sit down with Dr. Lorri Glover to discuss the most important concepts teachers should consider when developing lessons about colonial American history.  Lorri is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in History at St. Louis University and an expert on the social and political history of the colonial and revolutionary periods.  She emphasizes the need to carefully cons...