History

Noah Pinkham

In our department pedagogy colloquium this year, Teaching Fellows frequently reported that their students struggled with reading comprehension. This got me curious about what it means to read like a historian and how we can go about teaching these disciplinary-specific reading skills. For my capstone project, I developed a guide to teaching critical reading in history through active learning strategies that can be used in future iterations of the department pedagogy colloquium. Drawing on a survey of TFs in the department, pedagogical literature, and conversations with TFs in teaching consultations, the guide presents strategies specific to reading both primary and secondary sources.

View Noah's capstone project.

Anna Bisikalo

In conversations with graduate student TFs in our Pedagogy Colloquium, I heard about a range of faculty approaches to working with teaching fellows. Most TFs have very productive working relationships with course heads, but some reported miscommunication. For this project, I surveyed History TFs to learn about a) the typical responsibilities of a TF in the department and b) how course heads collaborate with TFs. This summary document represents a snapshot of teaching experiences in the department, and offers suggestions for standardizing certain aspects. Future PFs can use it as a gauge of typical TF work, and can build off of it to make further suggestions to the department.

View Anna's capstone project.

Danielle Leavitt-Quist

This document is meant to be distributed among G3s in HIST 3920 pedagogy class and other graduate students approaching the job market. It serves as a brochure-type resource for helping students understand how to leverage their teaching experience on the job market. Its general framework applies to the academic job market, but it could be useful for other markets as well. It covers topics such as writing a teaching statement, course and syllabus design, using teaching evaluations effectively, writing a statement of equity and inclusion, meeting departments’ curricular needs, and interviewing for teaching positions.

View Danielle's capstone project.

Belle Cheves

The History Department has a required year-long Pedagogy Colloquium, which the PF builds on every year. This year, based on feedback from prior years (and the current state of affairs), we incorporated more professionalization elements into the course, thematically combining pedagogical discussions with overviews and workshops of what else is expected of History G3s. For example, week three examines writing – how to effectively teach it, grade it, and manage doing your own (such as the prospectus and fellowship application essays).

I also developed a resource guide for History TFs, compiling advice from past TFs in an accessible, easily updatable format.

View Belle's capstone project.

Madeline Williams

The History Department Teaching Colloquium provides an opportunity to generate enthusiasm, awareness, and buy-in about practices of intentional and reflective teaching. The timing of the graduate program means that TFs are juggling a variety of dissertation-related commitments simultaneous to teaching for the first time. Given this context and a disciplinary preference in History for starting with primary sources, this year we emphasized in-class work with actual examples of pedagogical materials, including but not limited to: sample undergraduate essays; history-specific active learning exercises developed by other instructors; and real History syllabi.

View Madeline's capstone project.