World History II – Dr. Philip Cantrell
This class was a class I ended up losing as a excess fall-through credit when I changed my major to Liberal Studies, but this is still definitely one of my favorite classes!
My professor, Dr. Cantrell, had specific studies for his doctorate on the history of Asia and Africa specifically, so those topics were a major part of his lectures. He was always so excited when our topics included Africa, as he had visited there during his research and for some study abroad trips through Longwood, and he would always wear shirts he had bought in Africa for the lectures.
He had some interesting moments, like accidentally writing on the white board with a Sharpie, then when I suggested you could write over it with a dry erase marker, he wanted me to test the theory first before having some of us come up and help him take all the Sharpie from 40 minutes of lecturing off the board at the end of class. My favorite part was he only realized it was a Sharpie when we laughed at the way he drew a stick figure and he couldn’t erase the leg he had accidentally drew sideways.
Nonetheless, he was passionate about what he talked about, and he encouraged student participation by asking questions and making connections. I always felt like I learned something new in the class, and I always felt I brought home an important lesson, not just trying to get a credit out of the way.
Dr. Cantrell was big on books that provided accurate historical details with connections to an important time and place of history rather than textbooks. We read two books in his class, Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Silence by Shusaku Endo, that provided information about the Mau Mau Uprising and Jesuit missionaries being sent to 17th century Japan, respectively.
We also looked into different historical documents from historic leaders and people living through historic timelines, which we had to dissect and write essays about, and their relation to a topic we were covering in class. It reminded me of the Document-Based Questions (DBQs) we had to do for all my AP history exams, except this wasn’t timed and I felt a whole lot less pressure about what I could put into the essay.
One of these document-based essays focused on national unity and unification, looking into America’s national unity and different documents from Germany, England, Italy, and the United States. The essay I wrote, The Question of National Identity and Unification, talks of how the issues of national identification and unification of the countries the documents were from, then addressed America’s current national identity.