Patch 13:
“Students often take general education courses, such as World Literature I, without really knowing their purpose or function within their curriculum, which causes some apathetic behavior and even sometimes active resistance. One of the challenges of teaching at regional universities is that our students do not often have experiences outside the local area; we attempt whenever possible to encourage our students to see themselves in a more global context.”
This patch captured my attention as it aligns with many experiences I have had teaching history. Especially when working on subjects in the pre-modern past, many students question the relevance to their daily lives. However, as a scholar of women’s history in this period, I know that law makers are more explicitly using legal precedents from long ago to inform modern practices. For example the overturning of Roe v. Wade was heavily connected to notions of abortion and its practices in medieval law. The challenge with this connection, however, it does not nuance the way in which the laws were applied, nor the reality of society which had very different understandings of medicine, health, and pregnancy compared to our own. The article I attached is the American Historical Association’s response to the use of Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments.
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