🏫 Teaching Experience 🏫
This webpage houses course descriptions and sample syllabi of the courses I have taught. None of the information or documents from this webpage may be used or reproduced without my written permission. Please feel free to reach out to me through the contact link if you have any questions.
Sample Syllabi
The following are sample syllabi from some courses I have either previously taught or currently teach at Worcester State University and Springfield College. Course descriptions can be found following the sample syllabi. Please note that the syllabi for all survey courses I teach require the same assignments, lectures, and readings, so I have only included the syllabus from either Worcester State University or Springfield College to avoid redundancy. Following the sample syllabi, you can find a comprehensive list of classes that I have taught throughout my professional career.
đź“„ History 111: U.S. History to 1877 (Worcester State University); History 105: Foundations of American History (Springfield College)
đź“„ History 112: U.S. History 1865-Present (Worcester State University); History 106: The Civil War to the Modern U.S. (Springfield College)
đź“„ History 352: The Civil War & Reconstruction (Worcester State University)
đź“„ History 335: Modern China (Synchronous Online, Springfield College)
Course Descriptions
The following are general course descriptions for the classes that I have taught during my professional career at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, Massachusetts), Worcester State University (Worcester, Massachusetts), Springfield College (Springfield, Massachusetts), and Utica University (Utica, New York).
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
History 2314: American History, 1877-1920
Class Description: Between 1877 and 1920, the United States’ transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy created unprecedented convulsions that redefined nearly every aspect of American life. Western expansion, the rise of monopolies and trusts, unprecedented labor unrest, immigration, and contentious debates over reform culminated with a reimagining of the federal government’s role in promoting the social welfare of Americans. Yet even as the United States moved in the direction of “industrial democracy,” debates about race and immigration paved the way for uniquely modern forms of oppression often driven by the nation’s emergence on the broader world stage as an imperial power. Ultimately, this class explores how all of these factors paved the way for the birth of a modern American nation that continues to struggle with the legacy of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.
📆 | Semester Taught: Spring 2024 (C Term)
Worcester State University
History 111: U.S. History to 1877 (in-person, synchronous online, and asynchronous online)
Class Description: The famous author and civil rights activist James Baldwin once commented that American history “is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” This course examines how race, class, and gender intersected to define American history from European settlement to Reconstruction. We will explore such multi-faceted topics as settler colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, sectionalism, the Civil War, and ultimately, how Reconstruction—not the American Revolution—paved the way for the creation of the modern American nation.
History 112: U.S. History 1865 to the Present
Class Description: From the Civil War to the present — about three lifetimes for those who lived longest — the nation’s rapid changes stunned observers. This course is a survey of the complicated nexus of people, events, and other factors that intersected and shaped American life from 1865 to the early twenty-first century. In particular, we will examine how war, migration and immigration, race, gender, and industrial capitalism shaped the development and evolution of the modern American nation and its interactions with the international community.
📆 | Semesters Taught: Fall 2019 - Fall 2020, Fall 2023-Present
History 250: The History of New England
Class Description: A comprehensive survey of New England history. This course traces the multi-faceted ways that the interaction between Euro-Americans, Africans, African Americans, and Indigenous peoples led to the region’s distinct heritage. Additionally, the course will situate the regional history of New England within the broader context of American history by interrogating the region’s relationship to an evolving American nation.
📆 | Semester Taught: Fall 2019
History 352: The Civil War and Reconstruction
Class Description: A detailed examination of the evolution of the sectional conflict, major battles, wartime life and culture, and the revolutionary changes that the war brought to gender and race relations. After turning to Reconstruction, the course examines changing definitions of citizenship, Redemption, the "New" South, and the war's contentious legacy through the lens of memory and popular culture.
📆 | Semester Taught: Spring 2020
Springfield College
History 105: The Foundations of American History (synchronous online and on-ground)
📆 | Semesters Taught: Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
Class Description: The famous author and civil rights activist James Baldwin once commented that American history “is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” This course examines how race, class, and gender intersected to define American history from European settlement to Reconstruction. We will explore such multi-faceted topics as settler colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, sectionalism, the Civil War, and ultimately how Reconstruction—not the American Revolution—paved the way for the creation of the modern American nation.
History 106: The Civil War to the Modern U.S. (synchronous online)
📆 | Semester Taught: Spring 2021
Class Description: From the Civil War to the present — about three lifetimes for those who lived longest — the nation’s rapid changes stunned observers. This course is a survey of the complicated nexus of people, events, and other factors that intersected and shaped American life from 1865 to the early twenty-first century. In particular, we will examine how war, migration and immigration, race, gender, and industrial capitalism shaped the development and evolution of the modern American nation and its interactions with the international community.
History 335: Modern China (synchronous online)
📆 | Semester Taught: Fall 2020
Class Description: This course examines Chinese history from 1644 to the present. In addition to exploring China’s efforts to maintain self-autonomy amid increasingly forceful foreign challenges, we will interrogate the social, intellectual, and economic changes set in motion by wars, rebellions, and revolutions. In the twentieth century alone, Western imperialism, rebellions, revolutions, the curse of warlordism, invasion by Japan, civil war, and a radical reconstruction of Chinese society by the Chinese Communist Party produced frequent and sudden political, economic, and social changes.
📆 | Semesters Taught: Spring 2020-Present
Utica University
(formerly Utica College)
đź“…
May 2008-May 2017
History 127: The U.S. 1877 - Present (on-ground and asynchronous online)
Class Description: A general survey of American history from the end of Reconstruction to the present. The course is organized thematically around national development and the creation of a regulatory federal state, the American nation's emergence as an international power, and the domestic and international consequences the United States' role as a superpower. Special emphasis is placed on the ways in which race, gender, and class disparities have shaped American life.
History 135: The African American Experience
Class Description: A general survey of African American history from the origins of the Atlantic slave trade to the present. Specific emphasis is placed on the social construction of race, white privilege, resistance, and gender. Topics explored include but are not limited to: slavery and slave rebellions, family and community life, music and culture, segregation, lynching, reform movements, black militancy, the war on drugs, and "the prison-industrial complex."
History 305: The Civil War & Reconstruction
Class Description: A detailed examination of the evolution of the sectional conflict, major battles, wartime life and culture, and the revolutionary changes that the war brought to gender and race relations. After turning to Reconstruction, the course examines changing definitions of citizenship, Redemption, the "New" South, and the war's contentious legacy through the lens of memory and popular culture.
History 306: The American West
Class Description: This seminar focuses on the various ways in which the West took shape and evolved in the American historical imagination from European settlement through the present. Special emphasis is placed on settler colonialism, myths, the rise of cities, the Plains Wars, and the image of the West in popular culture.
History 311: The History of New York
Class Description: An examination of the multifaceted and complex history of New York State from European settlement to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Questions of race, class, and gender serve as the backdrop to a more nuanced interrogation of how ordinary people interacted with and were acted upon by the wealthy and powerful. The course moves beyond focusing on New York City exclusively to provide a better understanding of the complicated political, economic, and social dynamics that led various regions of the state to develop.
History 456: Guided Historical Research
Class Description: A seminar teaching students how to write a journal-length article. Working as an academic community, students write, peer review, and submit a substantial piece of original research.