Teaching
My teaching encompasses a global, transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary breadth similar to my research. Trained as Global and World historian at the University of Michigan, my courses introduce students to conceptualizations of history as the product of interrelated world regions shaped by the movement of humans, ideas, and goods. In the classroom, my students explore causal roots for historical change and elucidate key historical developments, sometimes at the largest scale, without losing sight of local complexity, human agency, and a sense for the uneven, and indeed violent, power relations that lie at the core of these histories. My classes regularly become explorations of grand narratives that anchor the present in broader temporal and spatial frameworks through such concepts as capitalism, globalization, modernization, or human rights, among others.
At Michigan, I taught and designed undergraduate classes in global economic and political history through the regional lens of Eastern Europe ("Poland in the Modern World") and environmental history ("Garbage in the Modern World"). My goal was to familiarize students from different academic backgrounds with a wide range of historical concepts, help sharpen their critical thinking skills, and nourish a culture of informed debate in the classroom. To facilitate classroom education, I incorporated pedagogical methods ranging from interactive learning, peer reviews, project-based activities to "traditional" writing assignments with extensive instructor feedback. |
An essential part of my training at Michigan involved teaching the History Department’s survey course "Modern World History since 1450." This class explored how capitalism integrated the world’s various regions culturally, economically, and politically over the course of 500 years. Students learned to see the world as interrelated, develop causal explanations for historical events, and identify distinct time periods as well as the changes and continuities between them. Exploring forms of cultural exchange, political organization, technology, and global trade, this course challenged my students’ assumptions about the West’s timeless and self-evident global dominance.
| Teaching Keywords Borders, Bodies, Class, Culture, Democracy, Disaster, Economic Life, Empire, Environment, Ethics, Equality and Justice, Gender, Glocalism, Humanitarianism, Human Rights, Materiality, Migration, Nations, Networks, Politics, Race, Sexuality, State, Society |