Teaching Philosophy and Experience

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My primary goal as an instructor is to teach students to think deeply and critically about historical issues. Mastering a body of facts is of course essential, but I also challenge my students to engage with a particular event or period from multiple perspectives. In doing so, I foster such skills as critical analysis, discussion of complex issues, and effective written expression. Historical study is a necessary and rewarding end in itself, yet I also encourage students to make links to the present, and to re-examine contemporary society and their role in it after close study of exemplary documents or contentious episodes from the past.

To enhance my lectures as well as class discussion of primary sources, I have made extensive use of new technologies. For all of my courses, I teach in a wired classroom, and I employ these audio-visual possibilities through multimedia lectures, web-based resources, and analysis and discussion of paintings, photographs, and film. For example, I preface nearly every class with a piece of music, which we then discuss in light of that day's theme. I also actively manage an expansive course website with many materials, including an interactive syllabus as well as a discussion board to which I require weekly postings.  In this open discussion forum, students write on complex ideas outside the context of their regular papers. These websites are an important interactive forum that links outside study to class time and encourages shy students to participate. As one example, I asked students to justify one country's decision to fight in World War I on the discussion board by using primary documents linked on the interactive syllabus, and in the next class we broke into groups by country for an enthusiastic debate session based on these postings.

I am currently an assistant professor at The University of Tennessee, and am teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of modern Europe. During the 2004-05 academic year as the Drushal Distinguished Visiting Assistant Professor at The College of Wooster, I advised Independent Study projects with seven seniors and two juniors. These mandatory theses make up the centerpiece experience of a Wooster education; I had an intensive meeting with each student for an hour per week to shape their ideas and polish their writing. I also taught Western Civilization since 1600, the advanced courses Central Europe since 1848 and Modern Europe, 1890-1945, as well as a seminar on music and politics in modern Europe. I enjoyed the significant interaction with students that this liberal arts college provided.

I have also had a variety of other teaching opportunities in past years. At Rutgers University, I taught two advanced lecture courses with 40 students each, on 20th-century Germany, and 19th-century Europe. At Brooklyn College, I had several sections of Western Civilization after 1700, a core course for all students. I felt inspired by the challenge of motivating and speaking to the students of these very different public schools-- the suburban juniors and seniors at Rutgers, and inner-city first-years from every conceivable ethnic background at Brooklyn College.

While a graduate student, I had a number of opportunities to serve as a teaching assistant. At Columbia, I worked for four semesters as a TA, both in large and small lecture courses as well as one senior seminar. During my extended research time abroad, I also taught for the Lexia International Study Abroad Program in both Berlin and Krak¢w, where I both lectured and advised students on an independent research project. Additionally, in the spring semesters of 2003 and 2004, I worked as an adjunct preceptor at New York University for a Soviet history course, part of the university's writing-intensive core curriculum. I led two weekly recitation sections of 20 students each, with a focus on critically evaluating readings through lively discussion. I was also closely involved in formulating and evaluating three short papers and a final longer essay. A particularly successful recitation involved the revolutionary year of 1917, as I had each student "join" one of the parties and take positions on the important debates and events of that year; in another, students represented the Right or Left Oppositions and articulated their views on the problems facing the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. Through such participatory activities and in an engaged atmosphere, the students were able to flesh out relevant themes like the nature of dictatorship and the challenges of modernization.

With respect to my teaching range, I am solidly grounded in broader European and Russian/Soviet history through my graduate-level courses, graduate study in France, oral exam fields, my Master's Thesis on 19th-century Germany, and teaching experience. I am able to offer courses on modern Europe and Western Civilization, as well as on the histories of Germany, East Central Europe, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.