Teaching Philosophy and Goals:
I am a retired Foreign Service Officer who spent 20 years abroad working at American diplomatic missions in Santo Domingo, San Salvador, Managua, Moscow, and Brussels, with short-term stints in many other countries as well. I speak four languages and consider myself both a citizen of the world and a student of its many cultures. As this background would suggest, I take a broad, multidisciplinary approach to the study of the past and wherever possible integrate subjects like art, literature, and science into the course work. Having experienced first hand the practical outcome of historical events, I tend to approach the study of history as an opportunity to get a handle on the present, and thus there is a good deal of the contemporary as well as the historical in class assignments and discussions. I agree with the Roman historian Livy that "In history you have the record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record, you can find...both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid." If you join one of my classes, be prepared for a very wide-ranging and energetic exploration of the past, with emphasis on its meaning for the present in all of its fascinating and challenging complexity.
Interests:
I have long been intrigued by the dynamics of social and cultural change. In 1978, I wrote and presented a paper ("American Women: Images and Realities, 1848-1919") that used socio-scientific methodology--the paradigm-community model developed by Thomas Kuhn to analyze the structure of scientific revolutions--to help explain the dramatic shift in public conceptions of women's proper sphere through the early feminist movement, from the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848 to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919. Although I left academia soon afterwards to join the diplomatic corps, I continued to address issues of gender and social, political and economic change by writing or contributing to Congressionally mandated reports on women's rights and human rights around the world, including a comprehensive study of the changing status of women in war-torn El Salvador for which I was sole author. While working overseas in zones of conflict or civil strife, I became especially concerned with what happens when cultural systems come into contact and clash with one another, producing consequences often unanticipated by the foreign policy establishment. I also devoted much professional attention to strategies for mitigating the effects of such dislocations through public diplomacy, to include government-sponsored informational and cultural outreach programs overseas. While the strategy papers I wrote for the US government on these topics generally remain outside the public realm, they are important in my teaching in that they helped to shape my deep appreciation for the dynamic processes that create, sustain, challenge, and sometimes destroy societies. I have seen some of the best and some of the worst changes in our world over the last thirty years; whether for good or for ill, these changes continue to engage my intellectual energy and to inform my approach to teaching courses in World Civilization at Nichols College. History is not only dynamic: it is downright volatile. And it is never dull. Take one of my courses and you will see what I mean.