My Career Story: Philip Davies, Director of the David and Mary Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library
U.S. Studies Online is excited to introduce our new segment “Career Stories”. This feature is an attempt to incorporate more professional development posts on U.S. Studies Online and address some of the wider anxieties in the postgraduate and early career cohorts regarding employment and employability. We hope to include interviews with professionals in a variety of research or American studies related positions. With us this week is Professor Philip Davies, Director of the David and Mary Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library since 2002. Current role How would you describe your current role at a job interview? I create and manage a programme of fellowships, activities, events, and acquisitions to enhance the work of the British Library in relation to North America. The British Library’s collection of materials relating to North America is the largest anywhere in the world outside the USA. In order to increase awareness of the Library’s North American holdings, and […]
Continue ReadingTeaching American Studies with iPads
My students are technologically savvy in a way I never was; using an iPad is second nature to most of them. But a focused activity like this shows how their digital skills can be applied towards productive research and, beyond that, to source commentary and analysis. As Professor Katherine Aiken has written, “establishing common ground with students is often the first step to effective teaching.” In this light, iPads – rather than being tools of distraction – can be aids to discussion and debate.
Continue ReadingSome of My Best Friends Work in American Studies: Bringing History and American Studies Departments Together
Steven Parfitt draws upon his experience collaborating between the American Studies and History Departments at the University of Nottingham to explore some of the best ways you can make lasting cross-departmental connections.
Continue ReadingShadows in History: Religious and Intellectual History in Higher Education
The final post in the ‘Teaching America’ series is by Professor Raymond J. Haberski Jr. (Indiana University School of Liberal Arts) , author of God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945, (Rutgers University Press, 2012) , who discusses his approach to teaching intellectual and religious history in higher education.
Continue ReadingTeaching America ‘Online’: Designing and delivering the Online Distance course ‘A History of the Blues’
The sixth post in the ‘Teaching America’ series is by Dr Christian O’Connell (University of Gloucestershire), author of Blues, How Do You Do? Paul Oliver and the Transatlantic Story of the Blues, who discusses the benefits to online distance learning when teaching the history of U.S. music.
Continue ReadingMore Bang for Your Buck: Teaching Nuclear History
The fifth post in the ‘Teaching America’ series is by Dr Malcolm Craig (University of Edinburgh) who reflects on his own approach to designing and teaching a course around nuclear history.
Continue ReadingAfrican Americans and Anti-Colonialism
The fourth post in the ‘Teaching America’ series is by Dr Nicholas Grant (University of East Anglia), author of the forthcoming monograph ‘We Shall Win Our Freedoms Together’: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945-1960, who discusses his approach to teaching a transnational history of African American Civil Rights.
Continue ReadingUS History as Myth-Busting
In the third post of the ‘Teaching America’ series Dr Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University), author of the forthcoming monograph A War for the Soul Of America: A History of the Culture Wars, discusses the ways in which graduate students can be encouraged to engage with ‘America as an idea’ in intellectual history modules.
Continue ReadingTeaching Radicalism
The second post in the ‘Teaching America’ series is by Dr Christopher Phelps (University of Nottingham), co-author of the new title Radicals in America: The U.S. Left since the Second World War, who reflects upon the intellectual advantages and challenges when faced with designing and teaching the history of U.S. radicalism.
Continue ReadingTeaching U.S Women’s History in British Universities: a Personal and Political History
The first post in our new HOTCUS-led ‘Teaching America’ series is by Dr Kate Dossett (University of Leeds) who reflects on her own experiences of designing a course on U.S. women’s history, and how she has encouraged British undergraduate students to consider how their own gender identity shapes their approach to the study of history.
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