A Preview of MAHG 2026<\/h3>\n
Every summer, something remarkable happens on the Ashland University campus in north-central Ohio. Social studies teachers from across the country pack a suitcase, leave home for a week (or two, or three, or four<\/a>), and join us for our Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG) program.<\/p>\n MAHG is built around the lives of working teachers, so when summer arrives, we invite you to leave behind the headaches and stresses of the teaching world and move into the quiet serenity of Ashland. Graduate credit and professional development are part of the deal, but our alumni will tell you the most transformative part is the connection you make with kindred spirits from schools around the country.<\/p>\n To get a taste of what\u2019s coming this summer, we wanted to share five of the many MAHG courses on the schedule for this summer, and we hope at least one of them makes you reach for your calendar. We have fellowships available for teachers, and all new degree-seeking students can take advantage of our \u201cfirst class free\u201d promotion.<\/p>\n Our first week of classes begins June 21, so don\u2019t wait. Apply now<\/a>!<\/p>\n This course asks a question with no comfortable answer: What did Americans know, and what were they prepared to do, as the Holocaust unfolded? Prof. Knott<\/a> works through the rise of the Nazi regime, FDR\u2019s wavering response to the refugee crisis, Wannsee and Operation Reinhard, the liberation of the camps, and the painful debate over why the Allies did not bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz.<\/p>\n Reading Highlight<\/strong><\/em>: <\/strong>Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy\u2019s letter to War Refugee Board Director John W. Pehle<\/a>.<\/strong> This is the letter in which the War Department formally refuses to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz, one month after D\u2011Day. Pehle had been pressing for the raids; McCloy wrote back that the effort would divert forces from the real work of defeating Germany. It\u2019s a short document that carries an enormous ethical weight, one that teachers are sure to continue discussing long after the class is over.<\/p>\n It is hard to find another thirty-year stretch in which the United States changed more profoundly. Prof. Krichbaum\u2019s<\/a> course moves through two world wars, the Red Scare, Presidents Harding and Coolidge, the New Deal, and internal fights over race, radicalism, and \u201cnormalcy.\u201d The primary source list is rich, spanning the Zimmermann Note, Randolph Bourne, Eleanor Roosevelt, and more.<\/p>\n Reading Highlight<\/strong><\/em>: <\/strong>W.E.B. Du Bois, \u201cReturning Soldiers<\/a>.\u201d A one-page thunderclap that concludes, \u201cWe return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.\u201d It is tight enough to teach in a single period and powerful enough to anchor days\u2019 worth of conversation about what America owed the Black veterans who came home to the Red Summer of 1919.<\/p>\n For teachers who want to share the musicality of a good speech with their students. Prof. L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e<\/a> pairs Aristotle\u2019s Art of Rhetoric<\/em> with American voices across the centuries: Webster, Clay, Lincoln, Douglass, Darrow, Bryan, Nixon, Huey Long, and RFK. Students leave with a new vocabulary for talking about style, argument, and persuasion, and at the end of the week, they write and deliver a speech of their own.<\/p>\n Reading Highlight<\/strong><\/em>: Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s impromptu remarks<\/a> in Indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Five minutes with no notes, and a quotation from Aeschylus. It is the sort of speech that reminds you why we study rhetoric in the first place.<\/p>\n You probably did not expect Aristotle and John Ford to share a syllabus, but Prof. Burkett\u2019s<\/a> course on the American Western is one of MAHG\u2019s most distinctive offerings. Students read Owen Wister\u2019s The Virginian<\/em>; watch My Darling Clementine<\/em>, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance<\/em>, and The Searchers;<\/em> and argue about what the frontier tells us about courage, friendship, self-government, and the limits of law.<\/p>\n Reading Highlight:<\/strong><\/em> Frederick Jackson Turner, \u201cThe Significance of the Frontier in American History<\/a>.\u201d The original frontier thesis argument still provokes engaging classroom discussion. Is American character really shaped by the encounter with \u201cfree land\u201d? What did Turner get right, and what did he miss? A worthy topic for U.S. history teachers to analyze.<\/p>\n If your students love asking how we got here, this is the course that builds the bridge from Watergate to our own moment. Professor Cannato<\/a> covers a lot of ground in this class, reviewing the \u201cMalaise\u201d speech, the rise of the Moral Majority, Milliken v. Bradley<\/em>, the Reykjavik summit, the Starr Report, Bush v. Gore<\/em>, 9\/11, Obama, and beyond. He frames each political turn against its cultural backdrop: Christopher Lasch next to Jimmy Carter, Grandmaster Flash next to \u201cBroken Windows\u201d policing. You\u2019ll leave with a usable map of the last fifty years.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/10.MAHG-Students-Campus.1.jpg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/figure>\n1. <\/strong>\u201cThe United States and the Holocaust\u201d with Stephen F. Knott (United States Naval War College)<\/h3>\n
2. \u201cRise of Modern America, 1914\u20131945\u201d with Emily Krichbaum (The National Women\u2019s History Museum)<\/h3>\n
3. \u201cAmerican Political Rhetoric\u201d with Elizabeth L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e (Rosary College)<\/h3>\n
4. \u201cThe American Western\u201d with Christopher Burkett (Ashland University)<\/h3>\n
5. \u201cContemporary America\u201d with Vincent Cannato (University of Massachusetts, Boston)<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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