An Introduction

Hello there.

My name is Malcolm, I am a history teacher, and I want to share some of my musings with you.

I know that most of you, like me, are inundated with content. The purpose of this blog is to let me think through some ideas in the written form – the posts are public for those who want to read along, but I have no expectations of finding a following.

However, I believe it is important to write for an audience. Good writing is written to be read, and if I were to type into a void, there would be a temptation to slip into laziness or cliché. Therefore, I am creating a public blog, putting my name on it, in the hopes that this will force me to focus and refine my prose.

In my mind, you, the reader, are literate, interested, and pressed for time – my goal therefore is to write things that are well written, thoughtful, and short.

I plan to write, mostly, about history – with an eye toward our present epoch. I am interested with how we think about and understand the past, which informs how I teach about these subjects. I have posted a few older essays already, which were about how dark pasts have come back to haunt the present in Haiti, Ukraine, and the Caucuses. Each of these pieces were shared with friends and family but never published publicly – my desire to archive them gave me the impetus to create this website. I currently teach or have previously taught courses in Geography, Global History, United States History, European History, and 20th Century Genocides; I anticipate these subjects will provide the raw material for most of my writing.

I will publish essays when inspiration strikes, but I plan on making this a summer project. I have some ideas of what I want to start with – so with any luck you will hear from me again soon. Thanks for reading, and I hope to prove to be worth your time.