My goals as a teacher are threefold: to demonstrate the process of thinking historically and analytically through readings and course content; to have students practice that process through discussion, writing, and active engagement with sources of all kinds; and to foster an atmosphere of inclusion, creativity, and excitement about collective inquiry in the classroom and beyond.
Experience
Farming in America (History 312/Social Sciences 649)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2016, Fall 2016
What Is Nature? (History 155)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Spring 2016
Seminar co-taught with Michael Singer, Biology.
Public History (History 274)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Fall 2015
Environmental History: Telling Stories in Place (History 116)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2015
Digital History (History 211)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Spring 2015
[course project]
Twentieth-Century U.S. History (History 240)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Fall 2014
Science in Western Culture (History/Science in Society 254)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Spring 2014
History of Ecology (History/Science in Society 221)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University, Fall 2013
History of Ecology (History of Science/Environmental Studies 353)
Associate Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Spring 2010
Sole instructor and course planner for this upper-level course of 30 undergraduates. [syllabus]
American Environmental History (History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460)
Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Fall 2009
TA for four sections (68 students total) of this survey course taught by Prof. William Cronon. [course web site]
The Sixties (English 237/American Studies 251/History 298)
Teaching Assistant, Wesleyan University, Spring 2009
TA for one section (25 students) of this interdisciplinary course on U.S. culture in the 1960s, taught by Prof. Henry Abelove.
Student Publishing
For several years, I collaborated with CTHumanities to publish student research on local places carried out in my Environmental History course on ConnecticutHistory.org.
- Diana Dominguez, Indian Hill Cemetery and the Vernacular of the Times
- Chien Ho, Understanding the Environmental Effects of Industry by Examining the Starr Mill
- Mariel Hohmann, Indian Hill Cemetery and the Landscaping of Burial Grounds in the Mid-19th Century
- Andrew Jacono, Middletown’s Reservoirs Drive Growth Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries
- Maya Lopez-Ichikawa, Wesleyan Hills Helps Redefine Suburbia
- Sage Marshall, Andrus Field 1831–1911: Athletics and the Environment
- Paola Maseda, Designed to Heal: The Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane
- Rachele Merliss, The Van Vleck Observatory: A Reflection of Environmental Conditions
- Colin O’Keefe, Olin Library and the Debate About Open Space at Wesleyan University
- Grant Tillinghast, The Socially Dynamic Drumlin of Foss Hill
Amrys O. Williams 