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Several profoundly important questions emerged during the Texas Conference on Introductory History Courses. How important is the introductory survey course? What will its future look like? Do we need to think differently about the survey course? Texas provides an important setting in which to ask these questions for the simple fact that Texas […]
This essay was published on July 23, 2015, in the Deseret News and the Church News. It it reproduced here with links to the sources cited. I am grateful to my colleagues Marie Erickson, Jenny Lund, Emily Utt, Michael Landon, Tyson Thorpe, and Deb Xavier for their leads, advice, and support.
The […]
[These comments were presented at the Mormon History Association Annual Conference, June 6, 2015, as part of the session “Telling Mormon History.”]
Our very language of English turns out to be quite impoverished for telling of historical things. Let’s begin with the word “history,” used by English speakers to mean past, story, and inquiry.
Sometimes […]
The word history refers to three different but related things–to the past, to the stories people tell about the past, and to the formal inquiry into the past and its stories.
In my mind, the best evocations of history are sensible–they are:
clear and rational (they “make sense”), wise and practical (“common sense”), and […]
[Note: Since 2012 I have been working with the American Historical Association to improve history teaching and learning at the undergraduate and graduate levels. As part of that initiative, I was invited to speak at the AHA’s annual meeting in New York City on January 5, 2015. This as a summary of my remarks […]
[Note: After Elder David A. Bednar invited Latter-day Saints to use social media more effectively, our local Sunday School began a weekly how-to class. I have been assigned to teach the course’s final lesson on December 28, 2014, and have placed the materials for the lesson on this Pinterest […]
