Dr. Rob Little Q&A

Teaching in the MLA since:				2024
Specialty/Area of Research:				Early 20th Century US Diplomacy
MLA Courses Taught:				Gilded Age & Progressive Era History 20th Century US Foreign Policy

 

 

 

 

 

How many years have you been teaching in the MLA program and what class or classes have you taught?

This (2023-2024) is my first year teaching for the MLA program. I have taught a class on Gilded Age & Progressive Era history, and have an upcoming class covering 20^th Century US Foreign Policy.

 

Tell us a little bit about your specialty or area of research?

I focus my studies and scholarship on early 20^th Century US diplomacy with an interest in how US foreign and domestic policies overlap, shape, and inform one another, especially Progressive Era reforms.

 

 

How does your background inform your teaching and scholarship?

My personal background is shaped by attending a small rural school with 125 kids (K-12—only 13 in my graduating class). There, I witnessed how important it was for teachers to make connections with students and invest in their individual learning experience. Though we were a community of learners, I was never made to feel that I was merely a number to them—I mattered to them.

This carries over into my teaching by making people the focus of my course. Students are diverse and come to the class, each with something different to add to it from their own experiences and world views. Much like in American history, it’s not just one individual strand of information or story that informs the nation’s collective past, but an interwoven tapestry that shows our convergence, connections, and contributions.  In my classes and my scholarship, I strive to show those intersections that provide a more complete picture of where we have been as we chart are own way through the present.

In my scholarship, I try to focus on individuals and groups from that period who might have been overlooked, marginalized, or mischaracterized at them time or by later historians and the broader society. Though people’s understanding of diplomacy places a premium on those whose names the finished document or merely the results of a treaty, it’s important to understand the role played by those at ground level, both inside and outside of government. These are the ones who help mold and shape aforementioned outcomes. Just as in education, diplomacy is a process with varied players, plans, and possibilities.

 

How do you try to make the material in your class engaging considering most students complete their MLA degree 100% online?

In my courses, I tackle aspects of the subject that are lesser known and relate in some way to the modern world we live in. By doing that, it makes the content more engaging, accessible, and meaningful. Additionally, I use a variety of delivery modes to keep things fresh. Instead of students only read articles or texts, they are to engage with videos, photographs, and audio. This not only provides different avenues conveying the information, but taps into the students’ varied styles of learning. 

 

 

What advantages do you think there are to getting a Master’s Degree in the Liberal Arts? How can it be helpful in the “real world”?

Borrowing somewhat from the concept of historian Richard Hofstadter, educational pursuits in the US have typically been broken down, for better or worse, in two categories—the practical and the intellectual. On the practical side, an MLA provides it’s recipient with the ability to compete for better jobs and earn higher pay. In the US, the percentage of Americans with any Master’s Degree is only around 13%. The MLA degree applies to a broader array of career fields than a Master’s degree in a specific subject. We live in a time when multiple career changes are no longer the exception, so having a MLA degree opens more doors and provides greater flexibility and applicability.

In terms of an intellectual pursuit, the MLA experience presents you with a wide, diverse, and stimulating array of classes. As a result, MLA students gain a variety of conceptual and intellectual frameworks and methods to apply, both in their careers and lives. This would include, among others, critical thinking, logic and reasoning, quality question formulation, problem-solving, effective communication.

 

What do you hope students walk away from your class having learned or gained?

At a basic level, I want students to walk away from my course knowing more about that specific era or topic of our past than they did before. More broadly than that I hope they carry with them a greater appreciation for history—what it means and what it can do. Extending outward, students will hopefully gain an awareness of the complexity of our world and the differing perspectives of people within it. It is my greatest hope, the come away understanding history is not merely a subject on their way to an MLA degree, but a finely honed collection of necessary skills (creating, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, evaluating, etc.) that can be applied to almost anything they do. Even though history is a study of the past, it provides the necessary tools desperately needed to engage our modern world.

 

How do your courses relate to events that your students experience or read about on a day-to-day basis?

The courses I teach directly impact my students (especially history teachers in the history cohort). It provides them with different topics, ideas, understandings, approaches, or materials that they can then implement in their own classroom. Also, as mentioned above, I choose course topics based on their relatability to currents events. Just as an example, in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era class, we had discussions about topics economic inequality ( “2^nd Gilded Age”), social dislocation (modern tech and communities), big businesses/monopolies (Amazon, Kroger/Albertsons) immigration exclusion (modern refugee relocation and border controversies), controversial wars (Iraq/Afghanistan), race and gender inequality (#MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter), etc. I would then ask students to compare and contrast these modern versions or corollaries with those in the past. Building my courses with this thought in mind I feel makes the past more approachable and the topic more relatable.