Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Mark Carnes

Today’s guest is Mark Carnes, Professor of History at Barnard College. His academic speciality is modern American history and pedagogy. Among his many books are an edited volume, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (Yale University Press, 1989). An interest in how history appears in things other than histories led him to edit Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, and Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other)—both of which have a dazzlingly impressive array of contributors. In 1995 Mark Carnes pioneered a new pedagogy, a role-playing pedagogy—now known as Reacting to the Past— which placed students and their efforts to understand the past in the center of the classroom experience. He has written several games in the Reacting to the Past series, as well as Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College, which he and I discussed way back in Episode 16. (I also discussed RTP in Episode 77 with historian Nick Proctor; and the philosophy of educational games with Kellian Adams in Episode 18.)  As is always the case with these conversations, and unlike more typical conversations on the podcast, we will be following a set format of questions…though we reserve the right to wander off the set path.