Fabulous Prizes

Our conference is less than a week away, and I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with this collegial community in person.

I’ll be facilitating the discussion at our Friday morning roundtable on teaching intellectual history to undergraduates.  I felt sheepish putting it together, since of all the panelists I probably have the fewest years of experience in undergraduate teaching.   But we have a strong panel, and I would argue that, especially if you are going on the job market this year, focusing on undergraduate pedagogy, even at 8:00 in the morning, would be a sound investment of your time.

Here’s something specific some of our roundtable participants can offer you:  insights about tenure-track hiring at our institutions.  As of right now, at least two of the institutions represented on our roundtable will be hiring on the tenure track this year in history / humanities.  Come learn what undergraduate teaching and faculty life is like at those schools, and get the inside dope on the job listings and some the kinds of opportunities that these jobs might provide.

For example, I’m very pleased to let this supportive community know that I was just awarded the Inaugural Teaching Innovation Grant by the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at Tarleton State University.  This was a generously-funded challenge grant specifically designed to enhance undergraduate instruction, and the application and selection process for the grant gave me an opportunity to be very deliberate in thinking through and clearly communicating what it means to be an intellectual historian teaching the survey.  So, technically, even I can offer some prize-winning insights about teaching undergrads!

Finally, because we are not above a little out-and-out bribery, our 8:00 a.m. panel is giving away fabulous prizes! We come to Chicago laden with swag, and we will be holding a drawing / contest / coin flip / dance-off to give away some awesome and desirable goodies from our respective schools.  Pictured with this post is my contribution to the swag bag – a thermal “purple squat mug” with a great big “T” engraved on the side.  And since the mug doesn’t actually show the name of the school (the other side is just purple), that T can stand for anything you want!  Teaching, tenure, tears, testosterone, Toblerone, truth – this mug can mean any or all of those things for you, or something else entirely!

Seriously, we are giving away prizes.  We have to – look at the panels we’re up against!  I mean, no offense to my co-panelists, but I really want to attend all the other panels in our timeslot.  Like, really.

It’s always that way at the USIH conference.  Every single timeslot on the program offers a feast of riches and a hell of choices.

That includes the last timeslot on the last day.  Scroll down to the end of the schedule and have a look for yourself.  I would attend anyof those panels, in a heartbeat, and count myself fortunate to have something so interesting and engaging to think about as a way of closing out the weekend. But I’m especially honored to be chairing the panel on Variations of Anti-Establishment.  You’ll notice that all three of the presenters are from Boston College.  They are graduate students, and they are all the students of my longtime mentor and marvelous friend Heather Cox Richardson.

Heather was the first person in academe to whom I revealed that “LD” was, in fact, a woman.  Ever since then, she has been both a cheerleader and a champion for me as a student, a scholar, a teacher, and a professional.  To have her students, my fellow scholars, ask me to chair their panel is an absolute honor and delight, and I can’t think of a better way to close out what promises to be a busy weekend filled with boisterous scholarship and brilliant friends.

That’s how we roll!