February 9: Ellen Eisenberg, Willamette University
“When History Collides with the Present: Tales from the 21st Century Classroom”
Global pandemic, economic crisis, rising extremism, protest in the streets, insurrection, contested elections, racialized violence, impeachment. In my 30+ year teaching career, I’ve dealt with all of these topics–as history. Yet over the past several years–and particularly over the past year, I find myself teaching these histories in the classroom just as new incarnations of these events play out across the country (and, in some cases, right outside our classroom window). In this talk, I’ll reflect on the ways in which the history I teach has collided with our present moment. How does the immediacy of these events impact our experience in the classroom? How do student experiences of–and concerns about–their present world affect their engagement with the past?
About the Speaker:
Ellen Eisenberg is the Dwight and Margaret Lear Professor of American History at Willamette University, where she has taught since 1990. She teaches courses on American history since Reconstruction, immigration and ethnic history, African American history, American Jewish history, and a research seminar called History in the Archives.
Her published work includes five monographs and a number of articles, focusing on history of Jews in the American West and their relationships with other ethnic/racial minorities. She is currently editing an anthology on that topic, to be published by Brandeis University Press next year. Her two volume history of Jews in Oregon, titled Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849-1950 and The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2015, was published in 2015 and 2016.
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