Teaching

Teaching students is a central part of my development as an academic. I have a passion for African American History and African American Studies and I thoroughly enjoy sharing that passion with my students in the classroom. In designing my courses, I have relied heavily on an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from a variety of sources, including primary documents, secondary literature, music, fiction, poetry, and film. My approach to history is from a social, intellectual, and cultural perspective, but in the classroom while teaching material “from the bottom up,” I always seek to contextualize social and cultural history within larger social, economic, intellectual, and political currents.

In my years of teaching I have tried to keep two things in mind: first, that the coverage of historical facts is crucial, and second, that it is important to teach students the skills to do something with the information that they are learning. Therefore, as important as the teaching of the historical record is, it is equally as important to teach students skills, such as research and writing. In my experience I have found that students learn these skills best through an interactive teaching style that demands their participation and challenges their abilities.

Courses at the University of Kansas

Graduate:

• The Life and Times of W. E. B. Du Bois

• The History of the Black Power Movement

• Introduction to Africana Studies I: African American

• The Civil Rights Movement

• Slavery in the New World: Slavery, Rebellion, and Emancipation

• Black Intellectual History

• African American Social and Political Thought, 1880-1920: A Reexamination of the Age of Booker T. Washington

• Race, Sports and Society

Undergraduate:

• Black Experience in the Americas: From Slavery to Emancipation