Teaching

University of Minnesota–Morris

Spring 2018 Courses

  • History 1111 Introduction to World History
  • History 3181 The Study of History

Fall 2017 Courses

  • History 2151 Modern Europe
  • History 2132 History of Fairy Tales & Folklore in Europe
  • History 3209 Modern Germany

Spring 2017 Courses

  • History 1111 Introduction to World History
  • History 2708 Gender, Women, and Sexuality in Modern Europe
  • History 3204 Nazi Germany

Fall 2016 Courses

  • History 2151 Modern Europe
  • History 3212 The French Revolution
  • History 3214 History of Childhood

Spring 2016 Courses

  • History 1111 Introduction to World History, 1500 to the Present
  • History 2708 Gender, Women, and Sexuality in Modern Europe
  • History 3209 Modern Germany

Fall 2015 Courses

  • History 1111 Introduction to World History, 1500 to the Present
  • History 2132 History of Fairy Tales and Folklore in Europe
  • History 2151 Modern Europe

My curiosity about learning, reading, and writing as historical phenomena animates my pedagogy. The educational world of my research—the 18th- & 19th-century Europe of Rousseau, Campe, and Froebel—differs in many ways from that of the 21st-century United States, with near universal secondary education, new technologies, and new challenges. But my approach to teaching and learning shares with those thinkers a respect for the potential meaning of education, not only in the growth of the individual, but in the life of society.

Whether in large survey classes or independent research settings, my courses are designed around source-driven history. I aim to give students tools to track evidence, to read for perspective, to weigh arguments, and to make sense of contradictory information through their own writing.

N.B. I am happy to share my complete teaching portfolio with evaluations, sample syllabi, and a statement of teaching philosophy. Please contact me at bruce088[at]umn.edu.

PAST TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Instructor

A History of Fairy Tales (Spring 2011)

Europe and the World: Expansion, Encounter, and Exchange from 1500 to the Present (Summer 2010)

  • introductory survey course, University of Minnesota

Writing Instructor

University of Minnesota Center for Writing (2014-2015)

Williams College Writing Workshop (2005-2007)

  • Undergraduate Writing Fellow (peer tutor for writing support across the college)

Teaching Assistant

Nazi Germany (Spring 2010)

  • advanced lecture course, University of Minnesota

The Family from 10,000 BCE to the Present (Fall 2009)

  • introductory, writing-intensive world history
  • Subsequent to this course, the two professors (Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Waltner), two TAs, and one undergraduate student presented a panel at the World History Association conference in Beijing (July 2011) on “Teaching World History as Family History; China as a Case in Point.” We  also co-authored an article which has been published by The Middle Ground Journal (Fall 2013).

The History of the Holocaust (Spring 2009)

  • advanced, writing-intensive lecture course

How to Do History (Fall 2008)

  • advanced, writing-intensive major capstone course