On July 7, 2020, Professor Christopher Maginn has just published an article in a special Early Modern Classroom supplement (2020) devoted to teaching in the era of COVID-19. Below is a link to the piece. Someone may find its discussion of pedagogy useful.
You can read the piece on this link: https://www.escj.org/blog/teaching-world-queen-elizabeth-i-age-sars-cov-19.html
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Filed under Faculty News, Faculty Profiles, Faculty Profiles, Fordham News, Global History, Public History, Publications, Teaching
As students all over the world and from pre-K to graduate school experience disruption to their educational lives, Fordham doctoral candidate Rachel Podd took some time to discuss the differing ways societies respond to pandemics with some students of the Bronx School of Science. One of the great teachers there, Mr. Matthew Clark, reached out to Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies looking for a lecturer, and connected with Rachel. She crafted a twenty-minute recorded lecture, including slides, for the students to explore, based on comparing societal responses to two pandemics, the Black Death of the fourteenth century and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Students read a selection from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron recounting the author’s experience of plague in Florence, as well as several current news articles on COVID in New York, focusing specifically on areas of commonality, including a rise in xenophobia and a breakdown in the rituals of death and dying. Students were also asked to consider how the experience of a pandemic is at least partially determined by social class and economic status.
On Wednesday the 6th, Rachel and about forty BSS students gathered on Google Meeting for a question and answer session lasting about an hour and a half. Discussion was wide-ranging and lively, as the students probed how ideas about disease causation – the miasma theory of the Middle Ages versus today’s germ theory – determined the ways governments sought to prevent or reduce the spread of disease, as well as how the medical establishment, past and present, has responded to moments of intense stress. Finally, Rachel, Matthew and the students discussed how pandemics result in fundamentally changed societies. Though immeasurably painful and demographically catastrophic, the Black Death allowed for considerable social reform, increased female entry into the workforce, and rising social mobility, fundamentally changing the way medieval Europeans lived. How, exactly, COVID-19 will change our own lives remains, as of yet, unknown.
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Filed under Grad Student News, Teaching
A group of graduate students studying at Fordham University has come together to analyze and provide insight into complex issues of both race and gender. Graduate students, in a course entitled, “Race and Gender” in the fall of 2019, led by Professor Kirsten Swinth, discussed race and gender in modern America.
As a final project, they each wrote several blogs, original pieces, and a comprehensive lesson plan that discusses a specific issue related to race and gender and/or a key historical insight that they obtained after completing the course.
Their publications are available on their student-designed public website (https://ufci2019.ace.fordham.edu ). Each blog post (written by one of the class members) tackles either race or gender through the incorporation of both secondary and primary sources. 
It was their mission to use the knowledge obtained through spending a semester studying these social constructions in great detail to provide valuable insight into each discussion. In each blog post or lesson plan, the students selected a particular topic and offered their research and insights based on the knowledge they had accumulated over the course of the semester.
Students of all levels of higher education, professors, and history enthusiasts are welcome to interact with the information presented within each post. They are invited to consider questions that arise in handling these topics, and consider how their own insights could expand upon these ideas.
List of Contributors:
William Hogue is a PhD student in History at Fordham University interested in the international intellectual and political history of US imperialism and its relationship to American Christianity. His research examines the history of multinational organizations, religious institutions and policy institutes, the politics of international order, and the connections between foreign and domestic policy. In particular, he focuses on the influence of liberation theology in Latin American revolutions and the US domestic human rights reaction to US foreign policy in Central America.
Benjamin Van Dyne is a PhD student in theology at Fordham University, where his work focuses on white and Christian supremacy and social solidarity in the face of violence and suffering. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and worked as a community organizer in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, New York City and Long Island before attending Union Theological Seminary, where he graduated in with his Master of Divinity. He lives in the Bronx with his two children.
Katie Shine is a first-year doctoral candidate in modern history at Fordham University. Her academic interests include the First and Second World Wars, 20th century Italy, U.S.-Italy foreign relations, memory studies, race and nationalism, and Fascist society in western Europe. Having previously worked in higher education, tutoring, and program management in the career development and financial services spaces, she has had many valuable (and treasured) learning and teaching moments.
Grace Campagna is an undergraduate Senior at Fordham University studying History, Anthropology, and Medieval Studies. She will graduate in May 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree in History. Her academic interests include medieval England and women’s history. She has enjoyed tackling new topics and time periods during this course on Race and Gender in Modern America.
David Marchionni will complete his Masters’ degree in History from Fordham University in August 2020. His MA Thesis will focus on the Stonewall Riots, and its impact upon lesbian and gender non-conforming people of color.
Owen Griffis Clow is a doctoral student in the Fordham University Department of History. He researches modern American history with a focus on the late twentieth century (1970-2000), violence, and the American South. He is a graduate of Lawrence University (B.A.) and Columbia University (M.A.).
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Filed under Courses, Faculty Profiles, Public History, Teaching
This is part 3 of our new series, “What is Global History at Fordham?” Today, we hear from Professor Samantha Iyer, a member of Fordham’s Global History consortium, on what global history means to her and how it shapes her work.
“Global history offers a perspective that is integral to my work as a historian of capitalism: a system for organizing life that has, since its beginnings, bound together continents and nations. It allows us to ask fundamental questions that tend to lie outside the purview of the national histories that have traditionally dominated the historical profession. For example: How did the work of enslaved people in the Americas since the sixteenth century affect economic institutions and everyday life in Europe? Why did the environmental catastrophe of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s United States have echoes in other parts of the world near the same time, such as South Africa and Australia? How have organizations like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Rockefeller Foundation influenced the economic systems of countries around the world? Global history encourages you to think critically about the geographic contours of the questions that most interest you.”
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Filed under Faculty Profiles, Global History, Teaching, This week in Fordham History
On November, 5th, 2019, History’s Technology and Pedagogy (TAP) hosted a workshop facilitated by Lisa Betty (Teaching Fellow, History). The session, entitled Creating an Antiracist, Inclusive, and Transformative Classroom Environment, demonstrated how to actively incorporate antiracist pedagogy in the classroom through language-use and writing. With inspiration from bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy and Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, graduate students discussed strategies for decolonizing language and writing in the classroom through the use of collaborative group work sessions and compulsory critical thinking. Lisa, Amanda, Patrick, and Toby would like this session to be the first of a larger workshop that aims to support GSAS Teaching Fellows in creating and implementing similar antiracist pedagogical strategies within the classroom and their teaching practice.
The History Department sponsored graduate group Technology and Pedagogy (TAP) meets weekly on Thursdays to discuss ways to incorporate technology in the classroom. Please contact Patrick, Toby, or Amanda for more information.
The History Department sponsored graduate group Technology and Pedagogy (TAP) meets weekly on Thursdays to discuss ways to incorporate technology in the classroom. Please contact Patrick, Toby, or Amanda for more information.
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Filed under Digital Resources, Grad Student News, Teaching, Workshop
Michael Sanders, professor and PhD student of the History Department, has written about his experience teaching undergraduates and the extraordinary introductions he has given them to Walsh Library’s resources and staff. Read about them below:
Michael Sanders in Walsh Library, Rose Hill Campus
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Filed under book history, Postcards, Teaching, Undergrad News, Undergraduate Research
Colonial and/or Post-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa: Fordham University solicits applications for a full-time, tenure-track position at the rank of assistant professor in colonial and/or post-colonial sub-Saharan African history. Applications should include a CV, three recommendations, a writing sample, and a teaching portfolio (with sample syllabi and a teaching statement), and should be submitted through Interfolio (https://apply.interfolio.com/
55059) by 1 December 2018. The successful candidate should have the PhD in hand by August 2019. Questions should be directed to the Chair of the Search Committee, Prof. Daniel Soyer, at soyer@fordham.edu. Fordham is an independent, Catholic University in the Jesuit tradition that welcomes applications from all backgrounds. Fordham is an equal opportunity employer.
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The end of the Spring Semester is rapidly approaching. Now is the time to plan for the upcoming academic year. Here are the graduate courses to be offered during the Fall Semester 2018. Stay tuned for the Spring offerings in the coming weeks! Continue reading
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Filed under Grad Student News, New Course, Teaching
Part of Fordham’s rigorous PhD program is its mandatory Teaching Tutorial. This class uses one-on-one training with a member of Fordham History’s professoriate to give PhD candidates valuable pedagogical training and classroom experience. The tutorial transitions PhDs from their first two years of coursework into their upcoming teaching assignments mandated by the PhD program’s funding package. We caught up with Michael Sanders, a PhD candidate who is finishing his second year at Fordham and recently completed his tutorial with Dr. Héctor Linda-Fuentes, to get his perspective on the experience.
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Filed under Courses, Grad Student News, Teaching
Fordham University is excited to welcome Dr. Marc Herman as the first joint Rabin-Shvidler Post-doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Fordham and Columbia. Dr. Herman received his PhD in 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote his dissertation on rabbinic jurisprudence in the medieval Islamic world. His presence will add new dimensions to the teaching of the medieval period in Jewish history, to comparative legal studies, and the intersection of Jewish life and Islamic jurisprudence. At Fordham he teaches the courses “Ancient and Medieval Jewish History” and “Islam and Judaism: Law and Religion.”
The fellowship and awards are made possible by the Stanley A. and Barbara
B. Rabin Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund at Columbia University and the Eugene Shvidler Gift Fund at Fordham University. Continue reading
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Filed under Department Events, Events, Magda Teter, New Course, Teaching
