The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Simon's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Simon
Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) United States History
Exchange Co-ordinator, School of Society and Culture
Teaching
Ìý
My teaching concentrates on the United States. I teach the first year core module entitled America from Settlement to Empire (HIS4002) which examines American history from the arrival of Columbus to the end of the Spanish-American War. This module introduces students to the key themes in the first two hundred years of European settlement in what would become the United States and demonstrates how the country has been shaped by settlement, revolution, slavery, civil war, westward expansion and imperialism.
My second year module, America Since 1900 continues from where HIST406 left off, examining the key moments in the United States’ rise to superpower status, analysing the Progressive Era, the New Deal, two world wars (focussing on the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII), the Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate and America's role in the post-Cold War World.
I offer a second year module entitled: Dunkirk to D-Day: The Second World War in Europe. This looks at the war from a largely British perspective, and incorporates social history, for example, the civilian experience of the Blitz and the arrival of American troops in the UK, alongside discussions of the key moments of the war in the West.
In the third year I offer a module entitled The Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1970. This starts with the Brown decision of 1954 and concluding in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King in 1968. In this module we examine the roles of ordinary people, leaders such as King and Malcolm X, important lesser known figures, notably women such as Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, and those who opposed civil rights such as governors Faubus, Barnett and Wallace.
Ìý