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@tkinias Short answer: small seminar with students at various points in their studies. Our course numbers reflect general levels, and this one is classified intermediate, but there is no set sequence, and few courses have prerequisites, so anyone can take pretty much anything. All but one are in their first year (counting spring-semester transfers)

And as I've said: I am not criticizing or testing them: just need to know what they know or don't know so that I can pitch my explanations correctly

@CitizenWald
Oh yeah, I know you’re not “kids today”-ing!—just trying to calibrate to what I see with my own students.

@tkinias Right, that was just for the benefit of anyone jumping in here in midstream.
And what do you find?
(I have taught a large gen-ed lecture course at UMass but that was via Zoom during COVID and TA's had all the direct contact with the students, so it was hard to draw too many inferences from that)

@CitizenWald
I find students vary quite a lot in what kind of knowledge they bring in—but that I can’t really make any assumptions. (E.g., when I taught modern Britain last year, I wound up taking a class period in the early 20C to explain what socialism and Communism are, because I realized students didn’t have the background to understand the significance of the rise of Labour).

@CitizenWald
But things vary quite dramatically between the lower-division courses which are mostly nonmajors taking their general education courses and the upper-division courses full of history majors. Our history majors are very good at synthesizing material from different courses, so by the time they’re juniors & seniors they’re building a network of good background knowledge.

@CitizenWald
One thing I find interesting is that a lot of our students come in with big holes in their history knowledge, but they *know* they have big holes. A lot of them—especially the more politically engaged ones—are a bit frustrated by what they didn’t learn in K12 history.

@tkinias Totally agree. The students here, too, are aware there is a lot they do not know, and are happy to learn.

Interestingly, I do find a certain kind of, let us say, overestimation of their own expertise or sophistication when it comes to certain topics such as gender and sexuality and religion: which may, historically, have been more complex than they imagine

@CitizenWald
yeah, I find religion is where students tend to overestimate their expertise the most—both students with devout Christian upbringings and students with strong anti-theist views tend to think they understand Christianity (and the influence of religion in general on history) better than they really do

@tkinias Exactly what I meant. Here, of course, it is mostly the atheist/ anti-theist. They just have a very cynical/instrumental view of things--but I should add, that they are not, ultimately, closed to a more complex view; just that it takes work

@CitizenWald
Yes, precisely.

And I can’t be too judgemental, because sometimes they sound a lot like I did when I was 19.

@tkinias Same. I periodically try to remind myself of some of the dumb shit I said when I was that age

@CitizenWald
that makes sense—we haven’t been through that kind of crisis, but history has shrunk to the point that I am one of only two T/TT historians on campus, so there’s similarly not a lot of opportunity for narrow specialization!

@tkinias Ah, not so different, then. I enjoy teaching beginning students or those otherwise not specialized, but I do think/fear, that, for this reason and others, our courses are going to have to change a lot in the next few years. I think I'll be able to do what I need to, but the curriculum may lose a lot

@CitizenWald
Yeah, our curriculum is going to wind up being very different from what we had when I was an undergrad in a department with a few dozen faculty. But letting go of the old way of narrowly slicing things up by nation-state is probably a good thing anyway.

@tkinias Sure, the national organizing principle is a relic of the 19th century. What I worry about it just a new thinness of the curriculum, a situation in which we tackle things eclectically and superficially. One advantage here is that we have a consortium with a fuller range of course offerings. But that places more stress on good academic advising, which in turn requires faculty who are both broadly and deeply educated.

@CitizenWald
Yes, exactly. I think we need to have more conversations in our discipline about how we organize curriculum in small departments.

@tkinias Exactly. I am the only European historian here now (!). The other is still on leave (departed temporarily during the budget crisis as part of our strategy to save the institution), however, tends to teach rather niche courses. We have more Americanists: some actual historians, and others in sort of "studies"-ish areas.
Our current transition is a bit hard to explain in the limited number of characters available. Suffice it to say, I will continue to teach whatever current courses still

@CitizenWald
an example of where I’m trying to be creative with this is a “1914” course I’m teaching in the fall—it’s basically a survey of the world just before the Great War

it’s a snapshot in time, but the idea is just to give students a taste of how vast and interconnected and dynamic the world was a century ago

@tkinias @CitizenWald That would make a great book!

@avielroshwald @CitizenWald
The course was kind of inspired by Charles Emmerson’s “1913: In Search of the World before the Great War” so at this point it’s not really a novel idea, unfortunately.

@avielroshwald @CitizenWald
Of course, my version of the book would be better but it would be a tough idea to sell, I expect.

@avielroshwald @CitizenWald
I listened to it as an audiobook a couple years ago. I wouldn’t say there’s anything terribly novel for a historian who has basic familiarity with the time period, but I still enjoyed it and think my students will get a lot out of it.

@tkinias @CitizenWald Well, then you could write a better version!

@avielroshwald Has that not, since time immemorial, been the essence of our profession?

@CitizenWald @avielroshwald
Yes! My colleague actually uses that book as the starting point for her Latin America survey course.

@tkinias @avielroshwald Don't know him personally though he is a close friend of a friend, lives nearby. Sometimes (actually, often), the non-professionals are the ones who strive for the big synthesis

@CitizenWald @avielroshwald
And then there’s Osterhammel.

@lizrdeb @jnthnwwlsn @CitizenWald
I’ve been talking with my honors HIST 101 students about how when the textbook is like “Greeks chapter, China chapter, Africa chapter” it breaks our ability to keep things chronologically lined up.

@lizrdeb @jnthnwwlsn @CitizenWald
I’ve been doing a lot of synchronizing in my East Asia class this semester, trying to help students keep what we’re discussing in China, for example, lined up with what they know about European (and later, US) history.

@tkinias @lizrdeb @jnthnwwlsn As a kid and student, I always loved a nice big comparative chart, whether in a book on one of those subjects, or as a standalone document or book. Even the old Time-Life history volumes did that, as I recall.

@CitizenWald
WTAF indeed

@avielroshwald @CitizenWald

@tkinias @avielroshwald Thankfully, I have not had to deal with that one yet, since these students are all left-leaning.

However, one students did say their high school history teacher had told them about the "horseshoe" model in which the extreme right and extreme left converge. I responded "So did mine, and even then I knew he was wrong." But I went on to explain where the idea came from, etc. etc.

@CitizenWald @avielroshwald
the horseshoe business is one I feel like I have to quash at least once a semster...