Geneseo faculty participate in NEH grant to revise history curriculum

SUNY Geneseo faculty members Professors Kathleen Mapes and Justin Behrend are currently participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to revise the Gilded Age and Progressive Era SUNY history curriculum. The grant, awarded to SUNY Cortland Professors Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch, includes input from professors and faculty from several other colleges in the SUNY system. 

According to the Geneseo website, the two-year grant enabled Mapes and Behrend, as well as many other SUNY professors, to participate in a study and revision session over the summer focusing on the late 19th century. As their efforts continue, participating faculty members plan on revising their own course curricula and devising outreach efforts with local high schools in order to rethink Gilded Age and Progressive Era courses across New York State. 

Both Mapes and Behrend have taught late 19th century history and agree that current students may be given the wrong impression of what the period in history was like. 

“Both Dr. Behrend and I teach late 19th and early 20th century [history], and these are two eras that are linked together and often misunderstood. Obviously, the Gilded Age is usually associated with Mark Twain and a sense of glittery success and excess, and then the Progressive Era is often understood as a period in which the abuses and injustices of the Gilded Age were addressed. That’s far too simple to explain what was a much more complex time in history,” said Mapes. 

Mapes explained that, although current history curricula on the subject is not incorrect, it has not always been effective and has long been questioned by some faculty. 

She said, “I actually think the New York state standards for teaching history are pretty good. However, I think it’s easy for students to latch on to simplistic ideas about these two periods. In terms of university level instruction, we’ve long challenged these ideas, but it was good to be able to get together with colleagues from other campuses to think of it in a more organized fashion.” 

Mapes elaborated that, although history is often thought of as the memorization of facts by those outside the field, history is rethought and reconsidered quite often. 

“[History is rethought] all the time, basically, so keeping up with recent scholarship is really important. In terms of our own research, that often forces us to rethink our traditional modes of understanding traditional categories, like who’s included and what’s included. Those are the kind of big questions we ask when we’re rethinking the curriculum,” she said. 

In addition to reaching out to other history educators, the NEH-funded team will also look into publishing a book on the new perspectives they are developing on these eras in history. According to the Geneseo website, the book will help educators incorporate new scholarship and updated teaching practices to their classrooms. 

“For me, best teaching practices involve ways to get the students to not only think about the content but to think about the skills that they’re developing,” said Mapes. “They’re using critical reading and thinking skills, research skills, writing skills, creative skills in terms of how they might craft their own histories of the period. So, it’s about moving away from the idea that history is just a matter of memorizing facts and dates, and instead encouraging students to act like historians themselves.”