Tomomi Kinukawa
Teaching Approach
The goal common to all my courses is to teach students how to engage with the course material critically and form their own perspectives. In my history courses I would like students to think about how history matters and how writing and rewriting history is a political engagement. I would like students to see that history is full of unexpected surprises that fundamentally challenge our assumptions about the world. In my history of science courses, I hope to show how science shapes and, in turn, is shaped by society and to help students become critical consumers of science. In my world history courses, I invite students to join historians' struggle to dissect our historical vision, which is deeply permeated with Eurocentric assumptions, and to start looking at historical connections and exchanges between different parts of the world in a new light.
In order to accomplish those goals, I encourage students to actively participate in both large and small group discussions. Because I ask students to critically reexamine their own long-held beliefs, the classroom may not always feel comfortable. I make sure that our classroom always feel safe for students to try out transformations in their ideas through interacting with their instructor and classmates.
In the classes I have taught, readings include scholarly articles and books, and a selection of primary sources. The primary source readings, historical documents from the period under study, are especially important in order to teach students to learn to negotiate with historical complexity and ambiguities. They help students appreciate many often contradictory perspectives instead of looking for one authentic truth. I use visual images, films, and visits to museums and laboratories to introduce students to historical sources other than written texts. I hope to show students how choosing our sources influences our historical narratives and to demonstrate both the fun and the difficulty in finding sources to reflect perspectives missing from public documents and master textbooks.
I strongly believe writing history should not be monopolized by professional historians, and I require all students in my intermediary and advanced courses to write a historical research paper. I find it most rewarding to help students pull together their ideas into sharp historical arguments.
My teaching has also been closely linked to my research and writing. Teaching requires me to find ways to communicate my ideas to the public without losing sight of complexity. Students raise important questions and make sharp criticisms on issues that are invisible for those of us who have been in the field so long.
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