Ryan Franklin, one of my colleagues, teaches a Graphic History course every year. For the class, Franklin chooses various graphic novels and memoirs that focus on historical events and individuals to teach students about historiography and research. One of the books he uses is Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and Ari Kelman’s Battle…

This past week, the Lillian E. Smith (LES) Center hosted “The Civil Rights Movement in Northeast Georgia,” an inaugural professional development opportunity for P-12 educators throughout Georgia and the surrounding states. I’ve had a couple of days to reflect on the program, and today I want to share some of…

During my “Jim Crow and the Holocaust” class, I am continually coming across new texts to add to an ever expanding bibliography or work that looks at the intersections between Jim Crow in the United States and the Holocaust in Europe. Recently, I read James Baldwin’s “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because…

A little over a year ago, I started thinking about the connections between the Holocaust and Jim Crow. I did this, partly, because I planned to do a study travel trip to Poland where students and I would explore these connections, notably meeting and working with Polish students who were…

In my last post, I wrote about the dangers of preaching persecution in the United States. Since writing that post, I finished Candida Moss’ The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martydom and read Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Each…

Growing up in the evangelical church, and continuing to attend during adulthood, I’ve noticed that the sermons from the pulpit typically, but not always, revolve around a handful of themes: service, spiritual gifts, tithing, relationships, evangelicalism, and a few more. Along with this carousel of themes, various comments continues to…

Frequently, when I was a kid, I’d go shooting with family. I shot replica M1-Garands, shotguns, AR-15s, handguns, and more. I remember one time holding a handgun, I can’t remember if it was Colt .44 or what, but when I pulled the trigger, the kickback knocked me backwards and my…

Whenever I go to the Lillian E. Smith Center, I take time to look around, and inevitably, I always find something new that I’ve somehow missed in my previous trips. Usually, scan the numerous books that Smith has in her library, her bedroom, and elsewhere. During a recent trip, I…

On a recent episode of “Dope with Lime,” I spoke with Michael Bibler about a recent course he taught, “Baldwin’s Queer South.” We spoke about a lot of things, but one thing that got me thinking was the role of art and the artist in the world. He mentioned James…