Historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Education enables us to know ourselves and to know the world. On the one hand, it challenges us to formulate our own beliefs. On the other hand, education (from the Latin educere) is a “leading out” from insularity to broadminded discernment, from solipsism to an awareness of others, from arrogance to mutual respect. My role as a teacher is to guide students on that path.
Students of history should learn to read primary sources, recognize cause and effect, confront new ideas, reimagine old ideas, see an issue from many angles, articulate positions that are different from their own, and situate new information into their current grid of knowledge. These skills form the foundation of our discipline and they are dismissed at our peril. The idea that history is simply “what happened” is one of the most persistent and threatening myths about our profession. While knowledge about the past is part archeological, it is more often anthropological and literary. Historians study not just “the past,” but real people, and then tell stories about those people. To help students enter into the process of being historians, I assign primary texts that disagree with one another, with our modern values, or with the image we have of the period under study. They must wrestle with this conflict.
For example, when teaching the Crusades, I assign documents that give different reasons for those military campaigns. I want students not only to notice the diversity of opinion but also to state, in their own words, arguments with which they might disagree. This is why I also assign short papers in which students analyze a source and explain how the cultural perspective embedded in it may be defensible within its historical period, especially if it differs from their own. The Crusades, late medieval religion, and early modern religious wars are all fruitful contexts for this exercise.
Anyone who studies premodern history must alert students to the perils of periodization and demonstrate that history does not inexorably bend toward progress. For example, a discussion of women in medieval and early modern Europe helps students understand not only that women were more autonomous in the past than they might have thought, but also that some of the Renaissance values we have inherited might actually have restricted women. On the other hand, the historian’s job entails confronting the diversity of medieval and early modern Europe, and showing students the racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and social divisions within a past that has too often been associated with a monolithic “white” civilization. Encounters between peoples and cultures that did not share the same values formed the basis for much of premodern world history, and they remain relevant in a modern, global world. Thus, the study of history can be an effective method of preparing the next generation of leaders to embrace diversity as a cultural and social good.
My approach to teaching is designed to foster two main attitudes in students: questioning and wonder. A distinctive of my classes is that I assign one student to come up with the opening question based on each week’s material. This not only forces students to be better readers, but it also trains them to be better questioners. As the course progresses, we talk together about what was good about that student’s question and how it could be improved. To integrate students’ individual questions into the discipline of history, I offer one guiding question for the whole course; for example, why did Europe come to dominate the world instead of some other region? How can we learn from the attempts and failures to account for diversity in the Middle Ages? Why go on a pilgrimage? When students know in advance the stakes of why we are studying the past, they work more energetically to find an answer.
There are undoubtedly good and bad questions, and students must learn how to ask good ones. A good question is humble, genuine, and not easily answered. A good question is directed toward something we really care about, and it inspires us to keep searching. A good question leads us to wonder because we notice a gap between what we know and what we want to know. To confront that separation, that difference, can be both exciting and fearful, but it is the foundation for learning about the past and about others. Wonder ideally leads to respect, never to hatred and condescension. It also leads us to ask new questions, and so the cycle continues. This is how students learn to learn.
I create a space where wonder can happen by telling my students on the first day that the classroom is not only a safe space but an intentionally curious space where any question, any idea can be voiced, as long as the person does so with good evidence and in a respectful manner. Too often, the classroom experience feels like a performance. The teacher acts knowledgeable and the student acts engaged when, in reality, the teacher might not know everything and the student might not have prepared. Fear drives both the teacher and the student to perform for the image they have of the other. To combat this fear, I often ask questions to which I do not know the answer; and, more importantly, I tell my students that I do not know the answer. When I show that I am not afraid to humble myself before the topic at hand, I also model what good learning looks like.
Honest questions can only happen when I remove myself from the center of the classroom and put the past—a text, an image, a person, an idea—in the center. Class size permitting, I prefer to arrange the desks in a circle as a symbol of this re-centering. Further, putting our sources at the center makes them the standard by which all statements—from teacher and student alike—are judged. This also dispels the myth that knowledge descends in a straight line from the teacher to the student. No field of study follows that pattern. Rather, all learners are connected to the past and its sources in a community of knowledge. To encourage this understanding, I have students in upper-division courses write a short paper, read each other’s papers in small groups, and then revise their papers in response to the other students. Knowledge, in every field, is created in a community.
My source-centered approach to teaching and my emphasis on community not only gives room for diverse opinions; it depends on diversity for success. Because the study of the past is complex and difficult, the more perspectives we hear, the greater our chance of understanding. If, through studying history, we develop the mental and emotional tools to respect individuals in the past whom we do not understand, or with whom we radically disagree, we can use the same tools with those living around us today.