Kyle Robinson highlights opportunities for collaborating with undergraduates and teaching history beyond the walls of the classroom. Robinson received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester in 2018 and is currently Assistant Professor of European History at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, IL. “Are you eating a whole chicken?” I looked in…
Erstwhile contributing editor Caroline Grego talks about recent-ish music that draws upon the history of the American South for this week’s post. Featured image courtesy Smithsonian Folkways. Rhiannon Giddens, a classically trained, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter intent on re-centering the historical contributions of Black women to American music traditions, gave an interview to National Public Radio one…
This week, guest writer Katie Randall (Ph.D. candidate, CU Boulder) writes about her experience in the classroom as a scholar of color. Find her on Twitter at @Katie_Randall2. Several semesters ago, one of my students asked me about the contemporary crisis of memorialization, sparked by the events in Charlottesville, VA, and he added—because I was…
Erstwhile contributing editor Caroline Grego interviews Dr. Natalie Mendoza, a postdoctoral research associate and founder of the History Teaching and Learning Project at the University of Colorado Boulder’s history department. The transcript below has been lightly edited, and the interview’s audio is available in the embedded Soundcloud file. Caroline Grego (CG): Hello and welcome…
Today Erstwhile editor Alessandra Link and Dr. Rebecca Kennedy de Lorenzini (Lecturer, History & Literature, Harvard University) discuss mindfulness in the classroom. Link points out that many academics cast a wary eye towards the subject of mindfulness. And yet universities are increasingly turning to mindfulness strategies—an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of techniques aimed…
Erstwhile’s Sam Bock and Sara Porterfield, along with their fellow CU PhD student Alexander Langer, often find themselves debating the question of whether to allow their students to use laptops or tablets in the classroom. They jotted down some thoughts on the issue as a way of generating a conversation. So, dear readers of Erstwhile, if you are a teacher…
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