Recent Courses

Below you can find a selection of course descriptions from my most recent courses (Fall 2023 - Spring 2024).

Fall 2023

American Women, American Womanhood, 1870-Present (UCSD Department of History)

This course explores the making of the ideology of womanhood in modern America and the diversity of American women’s experience from 1870 to the present. The class is designed around the theme of kinship as it is experienced, built, sustained, and determined by women. Our class will explore what kinship means (including but not limited to marriage, love, intimate relationships, family, motherhood/parenthood, fictive kinship, coalition building, friendship, and connections with ancestors and intellectual predecessors). We’ll also understand further who “women” are, and whether there is an “ideology of womanhood in modern America.” Our class will examine women’s history as content (the experiences of women), methodology (how historians analyze and interpret those experiences), and subject (the history of women’s history as a field). 

History of Native Americans in the United States, 1870-Present (UCSD Department of History)

This course examines the history of Native people in the United States from about 1870 to the present. We will examine how Native nations negotiated with and challenged state policy, the complex relationship between Native people and American citizenship, and Native nations' and activists’ development of a language of sovereignty and self-determination over the long twentieth century. Specific attention will be paid to how Native people fit into larger conversations about race, gender, and class in the United States. By the end of the course, students will understand critical issues facing Native nations today and how history continues to inform Native peoples’ experiences within the United States. By engaging both primary and secondary sources, students will become familiar with historical analysis and developing arguments based on available historical evidence from a variety of perspectives.

Sovereignty and Federal Indian Law (UCSD Department of Ethnic Studies)

This course traces major developments in federal Indian law from the 19th century to the present. Students will examine how major court cases and policy decisions have structured, challenged, and/or reinforced the sovereignty of Native nations within what is now the United States. Students will engage with US and Native understandings of legal, political, financial, and geographical power. Moreover, the course will examine how Indigenous ways of understanding land, water, religion, family, and culture intersect and clash with law and policy as it is currently structured in the United States. Major cases continue to be decided at the Supreme Court level that impact the legal and cultural notions of tribal sovereignty. This course will provide an entry point into understanding the historical intricacies of tribal law and why they matter today.

Winter 2024

Digital History and Memory (UC San Diego Department of History)

This course explored the relationship between digital technology and historical research, writing, and memory. We examined how history is presented and interpreted by scholars and the public using digital tools, and interrogated the relationships between public history and the digital humanities. We also thought about the ways in which digital technology and the Internet have shaped the way historians collect and interpret primary sources. This class critiqued and analyze the methodology of digital history and provided students with a hands-on opportunity to create a digital history resource. We worked with a digitized collection of UCSD Student Newspapers online at Geisel Library. 

History of the United States in the 19th Century (UC San Diego Department of History)

This course provides an overview of nineteenth century U.S. history (1800s), from Jefferson's presidency to the turn of the twentieth century. We will focus on four main overlapping themes: slavery, colonialism, capitalism, and climate change. Major areas of inquiry include but are not limited to: party politics and the growth of federal power; territorial conquest and the rise of sectional tensions; the Civil War and Reconstruction; industrialization and immigration; efforts by dispossessed groups to gain rights; and the emergence of the U.S. as an imperial power on the international stage.

History of Native Americans and Indigenous People in the US I (UCSD Department of Ethnic Studies)

This course examines the histories of Native American, Pacific Islander, and other Indigenous populations in the United States, with specific emphasis on precolonial and postcontact interaction and knowledge systems of Indigenous groups from the 1400s to mid-nineteenth century. By exploring slavery, economics, diplomacy, violence, gender dynamics, and racial ideology, we will interrogate the dynamics of Native-European encounters throughout North America. In addition, we will assess how the development of the United States as a political, legal, and social entity impacted relations between settlers and Native nations. We will investigate the role of Native people in transformative events in American history such as the American Revolution and Civil War, and examine the changing nature of US political relations with sovereign Native nations. This course will introduce students to scholarly debates about how Native American history is presented and understood.

Spring 2024

History of Welfare Policy and Welfare Rights in the United States (UCSD Department of History)

This course explores the history of welfare policy in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present day. We’ll be covering both the formation of the modern welfare state and various responses to the bureaucracy of its administration, including how eligibility for benefits was evaluated, how welfare beneficiaries were surveilled by state agents, and how welfare was framed as either a right/entitlement or a need. Welfare is intimately intertwined with ideology about marriage, gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship and this course will explore those connections. We’ll also explore the ways in which recipients of welfare benefits advocated for themselves and resisted stereotyped and harmful depictions of their receipt of welfare benefits. Welfare programs to be examined in this class include programs administered by the Freedmen’s Bureau, allowances distributed to wives and dependents of military servicemen during WWI, benefits distributed under the Social Security Act and GI Bill, Supplemental Security Income, as well as programs for mothers with dependent children and military service members and veterans.

The Craft of History (UCSD Department of History)

This course invites you into the world of historians and explores the ways in which humans uncover, analyze, and understand the past. In this course we will ask: how is it even possible to get to know the past? How is a coherent historical account created out of bits and pieces? What is historical evidence and how can we know whether it is trustworthy? Why do historians disagree with each other all the time? And, what is history even good for? In this class you will be doing history, using critical judgment and professional skills to create your own historical accounts and explanations. We will spend time in the archive, locate and evaluate secondary sources, and generate questions for future research. You’ll also be practicing how to write historical analysis and narratives, and providing feedback for others.