Whig Hill

Teaching update

The Community College is going well. I made some significant adjustments to the syllabi this semester and I’m pretty happy with the results. I’ll do more tweaking for the spring semester. My favorite student this semester is a fellow who gets all of his history from Glenn Beck. And while I’m not a fan of Beck’s historical methods, this particular student is the best because he’s engaged, curious, brings me things to talk about, and stays after class to discuss topics in American history. Who could ask for more? I didn’t realize how much I liked him until he missed a class a couple of weeks ago and I discovered how much I had been shaping my extemporaneous discussions around anticipating his thinking. I think he likes me too, but not until after I had to explain to him that I’m not really a radical Marxist brainwashing our youth into hating America.(1) He seemed surprised that a few of us historians are not that way. He still refers to “your friend Karl” and I still insist that Marx offered frequently valuable observations on history and culture.

Anyhow, next semester I’ll be teaching a world history (1900-1914) class at the four-year university I attend. Can you imagine!?

(1) Beware, though...as all true American Patriots know, Liberals LIE!!!

Dissertation update

I attended the Southern Historical Association annual conference in Charlotte last week. Good times, as they say. [BTW, the Westin hotel there is a price-gouging highway robber.] When grad students and scholars introduce each other, the inevitable question is “so, what are you working on?” Having to answer that a score or so times is real good motivation to get the description of your work down to some sound bites. I’ve had trouble explaining my work concisely, but this week I went back and pared down my analytical framework and began consolidating my thoughts and conclusions about evangelical faith in the southern piedmont. So I’ve got an outline for a section one (can’t call it a chapter because I have no idea how long it will be or how it will break down) and have started to shoehorn two seasons’ worth of research into some actual writing. I hope to roll some of it out by late next semester for my peers to mock and my mentors to absolutely destroy.

If this sort of stuff interests you, I’m working forward from this Daniel Wickberg passage: “The overwhelming focus on instrumentalizing culture as a tool of power in some of the dominant forms of cultural history finds no room for those elements of culture that cannot be implicated in power relations. Culture is not power, nor is power the only or the most important element of culture. Power is but one dimension of culture, a dimension that might be more or less important for the historian and analyst, depending upon the concrete specifics of the cultural moment being studied. It is an impoverished vision of human life that insists on turning people's whole ways of experiencing, perceiving, and feeling into expressions of one dimension of human life.“ Needless to say, I won’t be winning any popularity contests with this line of thinking.

OMG I just ran in a 5k

Surprised? I am, that’s for sure. Actually, I’ve been running since the beginning of October—as much running as a 39 year old out of shape diabetic who has never run before can do. Started slowly, some running, some walking, some running. I can’t quite do three miles yet without a couple spells of walking, but believe me, that’s a %1000 improvement over what I did (or couldn’t do) on Day 1. Combined with a very conscientious diet, my blood sugar numbers have been awesome, and I’ve dropped about twelve pounds in six weeks. Anyhow, this morning’s 5k was a fundraiser for the Burwell School in Hillsboro. (If you are following me on Twitter, I post my Garmin outputs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)