Episode 156: Dr. Kevin Gannon

This week my friend Kevin Gannon drops in to talk about his career in history education, how education has changed, what to do about A.I., and the role of social media as a scholar. This is a cool conversation with one of the coolest dudes I know.

About our guest: 

Dr. Kevin Gannon is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFE) and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte.

From 2014-22, he served as Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he also taught from 2004-2022. In addition to directing GV’s faculty development operations, he was also a department chair (2011-2014) and co-directed the New Student Seminar program (2005-2011).

His teaching, research, and public work (including writing) centers on critical and inclusive pedagogy; race, history, and justice; and technology and teaching. He writes at least semi-regularly for The Chronicle of Higher Education), and his essays on higher education have also been published in Vox and other media outlets. His book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, was published by West Virginia University press in Spring, 2020, as part of their Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series, edited by James M. Lang. He is currently writing a textbook for the US Civil War and Reconstruction eras that’s grounded in settler-colonial theory for Routledge. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, which was directed by Ava DuVernay. He is a speaker and consultant about a range of topics on campuses across North America; in this work, he endeavors to bring passion, humor, and interactivity to my audiences. He is also delighted to work with smaller groups of students, individual classes, or selected groups of faculty and staff on these campus visits. You can find him on Twitter: @TheTattooedProf.

Kevin's scholarly work centers on Race and Racisms, Critical and Inclusive Pedagogy, nineteenth-century history (particularly the United States and the Americas), and historiography and theory. His teaching ranges widely: Civil War and Reconstruction; Colonial America and the Atlantic World; Latin American history; Research Methods and Historiography; and the History of Capitalism are in my regular rotation, along with survey-level offerings in Ancient and Medieval World History. He teaches regularly in both in-person and online learning spaces, and he also has extensive experience working with first-year and at-risk students.

As an educational developer, Kevin works closely with his colleagues in the faculty, staff, and administration to promote excellence and innovation in teaching, and to support faculty work across the areas of teaching, scholarship, and university service. He is a fierce advocate for professional development in all its manifestations, active learning, scholarly teaching, good technology, social justice, movable furniture, and humor in any environment.