It Ain't Easy

I may have mentioned that I'm teaching my first 100% me, 100% of the time classes this summer. On the docket we've got European Intellectual History, from Kant and the enlightenment through Gorz, Habermas, and postmodern political conundrums. During the second session, we switch gears to straight-up nineteenth-century European history, from the French Revolution to World War I. I'm responsible for lecturing on everything from German Idealism in the 1830s to the aftermath of the Crimean War to why Roland Barthes was not a very good semiologist.

Of the various things this makes me realize is how and why professors routinely crib so much of their stuff from really specific sources. My adviser regularly informs the students in his classes about which books he's used for that day's lecture, sometimes narrowing it down to a single definitive biography or study (last term's action-packed lecture on the Napoleonic Wars was from one crotchety old French military historian.) The root of the issue is the contrast between the hyper-specialization of research and the vast breadth of teaching survey courses: academics are supposed to focus like nerdy lasers on tiny little morsels of material in their research, but we're also supposed to be able to cover huge gallumphing swaths in our teaching. Thus, I think most of us find ourselves needing to power-read a single good book on a subject and teach from it, lacking the time or energy to read more broadly.

Mostly, what I wish I had more of are juicy anecdotes. Kids love anecdotes in history (Kant was short and only ate once a day, on the first Christmas during WWI French and German soldiers fraternized in between the trenches, Sartre had terrible personal hygiene, etc.), but historians often forget to include them. Here's hoping I come up with a few more zingers before I start the classes in three weeks...