“What if American Studies is defined not so much in the pages of the most cutting-edge publications, but through what happens in our classrooms and other learning spaces?” In Teaching American Studies Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello, Joseph Entin, and Rebecca Hill ask a diverse group of American Studies educators to respond to that question by writing chapters about teaching that use a classroom activity or a particular course to reflect on the state of the field of American Studies. Teaching American Studies speaks to teachers with a wide range of relationships to the field. To start, it is a useful how-to guide for faculty who might be new to, or unfamiliar with, American Studies. Each author brings the reader into their classes to offer specific, concrete details about their pedagogical practice, and their students' learning. The resulting chapters connect theory and educational action as well as share challenges, difficulties, and lessons learned. The volume also provides a collective impression of American Studies from the point of view of students and teachers. What primary and secondary texts and what theoretical challenges and issues do faculty use to organize their teaching? How does the teaching we do respond to our institutional and educational contexts? How do our experiences and those of our students challenge or change our understanding of American Studies? Chapters in this collection discuss teaching a broad range of materials, from memoirs and novels by Anne Moody and Octavia Butler to cutting-edge cultural theory, to the widely used collection Keywords for American Cultural Studies. But the chapters in this collection are also about dancing, eating, and walking around a campus to view statues and gravestones. They are about teaching during the era of Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, and giving up authority in the classroom. Teaching American Studies is both a new way to think about American Studies and a timely collection of effective ways to teach about race, gender, sexuality, and power in a moment of political polarization and intense public scrutiny of universities.

This book considers how interdisciplinary conversation, critique, and collaboration enrich and transform humanities and social science education for those teaching and studying traditional Americanist fields.

A resource for all who teach and study history, this book illuminates the unmistakable centrality of American Indian history to the full sweep of American history. The nineteen essays gathered in this collaboratively produced volume, written by leading scholars in the field of Native American history, reflect the newest directions of the field and are organized to follow the chronological arc of the standard American history survey. Contributors reassess major events, themes, groups of historical actors, and approaches--social, cultural, military, and political--consistently demonstrating how Native American people, and questions of Native American sovereignty, have animated all the ways we consider the nation's past. The uniqueness of Indigenous history, as interwoven more fully in the American story, will challenge students to think in new ways about larger themes in U.S. history, such as settlement and colonization, economic and political power, citizenship and movements for equality, and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American. Contributors are Chris Andersen, Juliana Barr, David R. M. Beck, Jacob Betz, Paul T. Conrad, Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom, Margaret D. Jacobs, Adam Jortner, Rosalyn R. LaPier, John J. Laukaitis, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Robert J. Miller, Mindy J. Morgan, Andrew Needham, Jean M. O'Brien, Jeffrey Ostler, Sarah M. S. Pearsall, James D. Rice, Phillip H. Round, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and Scott Manning Stevens.

What's wrong with today's teacher-evaluation systems-and how to improve them Unsound teacher evaluation practices lead to misinformed decisions regarding strategies for student learning, resulting in negative effects to students. Education measurement and evaluation expert W. James Popham critiques what is wrong with many existing teacher-evaluation systems and offers an alternate system that respects the professionalism and dignity of teachers. Popham argues that, because teaching is a very situation- specific profession, the use of any paint-by-numbers, one- size-fits-all teacher evaluation system is patently absurd. Rather, the only defensible approach to teacher evaluation is to base it on collegial judgment, that is, on the evaluative conclusions of experienced teachers who have been specifically trained and formally certified to carry out this function. This book discusses: Key strengths and weaknesses of prominent teacher-evaluation evidence How to improve a flawed teacher-evaluation program The merits of a teacher evaluation program based on "evidence-governed collegial judgment

"Drawing on Christine Sleeter's review of research on the academic and social impact of ethnic studies commissioned by the National Education Association, this book will examine the value and forms of teaching and researching ethnic studies. The book employs a diverse conceptual framework, including critical pedagogy, anti-racism, Afrocentrism, Indigeneity, youth participatory action research, and critical multicultural education. The book provides cases of classroom teachers to 'illustrate what such conceptual framework look like when enacted in the classroom, as well as tensions that spring from them within school bureaucracies driven by neoliberalism.' Sleeter and Zavala will also outline ways to conduct research for 'investigating both learning and broader impacts of ethnic research used for liberatory ends'"--

This history of Native Americans, from the period of first contactto the present day, offers an important variation to existingstudies by placing the lives and experiences of Native Americancommunities at the center of the narrative. Presents an innovative approach to Native American history byplacing individual native communities and their experiences at thecenter of the study Following a first chapter that deals with creation myths, theremainder of the narrative is structured chronologically, coveringover 600 years from the point of first contact to the presentday Illustrates the great diversity in American Indian culture andemphasizes the importance of Native Americans in the history ofNorth America Provides an excellent survey for courses in Native Americanhistory Includes maps, photographs, a timeline, questions fordiscussion, and “A Closer Focus” textboxes that providebiographies of individuals and that elaborate on the text, exposing students to issues of race, class, and gender

The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every level neglect it in favor of research and publication. In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.