Teaching and Learning in the Humanities Now Workshop Series

Before and After: How We Redesigned Courses for Educational Equity and Active Learning
with Alan Christy and Jody Greene

The Institute for Humanities Research cluster “Teaching and Learning in the Humanities Now” is hosting a new workshop series that features educators in humanities fields at UC Santa Cruz sharing changes they have made to their teaching—ranging from changes to in-class policies and styles, to assignment re-design, to whole course transformations. The workshop series seeks to promote collective conversations about how we teach in the humanities now, and is open to all graduate students and faculty.

In the first workshop, “Before and After: How We Redesigned a Course for Educational Equity and Active Learning,” Alan Christy (Associate Professor of History) and Jody Greene (Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and History of Consciousness) will discuss how they transformed lecture or survey courses to enhance educational equity and active learning in their classrooms.

Transforming “The Japanese Empire”
Associate Professor Alan Christy will discuss the transformation of a survey history course into a research seminar driven by the experience of discovery and focused on three key skills for researchers: asking good questions, finding sources, and articulating value.

Transforming “The Eighteenth-Century English Novel”
Professor Jody Greene will discuss the transformation of a traditional lecture course into a small course for entering transfer students, including the introduction of sequenced writing assignments, structured in-class activities, and presentations on the “hidden” aspects of the curriculum—e.g. how to take notes, how to read for a literature course, and how to write effectively within the discipline.

**If you’re interested in joining the research cluster and would like to be included on the cluster email list, please contact Jody Greene at jgreene@ucsc.edu.