Centre Trail History Podcast

We hand things over pretty quickly to some alumni from our program! We recently had homecoming at Centre and at a History program coffee get-together we had some lovely conversations with people roaming the earth with Centre College degrees in History. We wish we could have recorded everyone, but we do have great chats here with Amanda Cook Grimes ‘87, Bill Grimes ’87, Mitchell Esterle ‘17, and Bo Smith ’84.

We think this is a great insight into how people are using their History majors out in the wide world. If you are an alum, a prospective student, an interested parent, or are just curious, please feel free to get in touch with us. Contact details at https://centretrail.com/contact/

John and Tara got together before Fall Break and all the wild times that entails (eh…. grading, actually) to talk about Columbus Day and Northern Ireland’s Marching Season. What kind of factors motivate people to commemorate certain events or people, and why do we choose to use public space to do it?

John and Tara get together to talk about author Colson Whitehead’s visit to Centre's campus this past week and why his award-winning novel The Underground Railroad is so interesting as a contribution to wider historical discussion, our preparation for the semester to come, and some historical context for discussion of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Jon Earle welcomes Centre student Evan Aroko to discuss representations of Africa in film, specifically around the upcoming release of the Marvel Studios film Black Panther. The film offers of a new and interesting framework for interpreting narratives of violence and Western intervention in Africa, and also fits into a specific present-day context of representations of race in American and Western media. Evan Aroko also shares how these narratives influence his own work.

Tara and John talk a little baseball in this episode of the Centre Trail podcast, before Tara hits the road, if only for a few minutes, to visit our colleague Sara Egge for some historical context on how Americans experience and talk about natural disasters.

Tara and John sit down to discuss memory in the classroom. We talk about personal memories of the September 11 attacks and relate it to our process in the classroom for creating connections to students. It raises a lot of interesting questions, not least of which the problem of historians’ need for distance from a topic conflicting with our students’ expectations. Tara talks us through Stephen Dove’s recent piece on DACA for the site, we chat a little about events in class, and John gets to gush about Stranger Things for a couple of minutes.

John and Tara get together on Labor Day to reflect on the first week of the Fall Semester and talk about how we approach our students to start a term. Along the way we talk about specific approaches to early classes, a little bit of history of the Labor Day holiday, and the mythical medieval ruler Prester John. We also talk a little bit about the history of North Korea to give some context to recent events.

John and Tara welcome you to the Centre Trail podcast, run by the History Program at Centre College. We chat a little bit about our broad hopes for this podcast and our website, www.centretrail.com. Along the way we talk about life at a small liberal arts college and the return to classes in the Fall.

Music is "Fearless" by Purple Planet.

http://www.purple-planet.com/upbeat/4593380163