Case Studies | Making the case
Using case studies in the classroom
Vanessa Lide and Kelly McFarland
We’ve all been there. It’s late August, and you find yourself scrambling to finalize syllabi for the semester’s classes. Whether you need to upload the final reading assignments or find new ways to facilitate discussion and create student participation, your upcoming class is stressing you out as you juggle writing deadlines, research, and a variety of other responsibilities. So you reach for the sources and teaching methods that feel most comfortable to you.
To many diplomatic historians, or professors of international history more generally, case studies may not fall under the definition of something that we routinely assign to students. Business and law school instructors have used case studies for decades. Ask your friendly local history professor if they have used case studies in the classroom, though, and most will likely say no (some may even get increased blood pressure and a clammy sheen to their skin). We tend to see case studies as something foreign, something that works in other disciplines but does not fit easily into our neat little worlds of lectures and colloquia. This needn’t be the case, however. Looking more closely, case studies can be just as useful in the history classroom, as they “combine the power of storytelling with critical discussion, shared experiences, and rigorous academic practice and theory.”
Read the full article by ISD’s director of programs and research, Kelly McFarland, and former editor Vanessa Lide, in Passport.
Originally published in Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review in January 2018.
