My historical writing focuses on genres that interpret historical scholarship for a wider audience: encyclopedia articles, essays on teaching history, essays that explore nuggets of history in a popular style for non-specialists. I love to explore specific places and cultures, and my writing reflects that.  I also write personal essays, and I sometimes try my hand at humor.

Essays on teaching for Common-place’s Common School column:

• “The Caribbean Game: Building Students’ Vision of Power Dynamics ‘Beyond the Line’” (Winter 2017)
• “Atlantic Adventurers of the Middle Ages: Do the Vikings Belong in Early American History?” (Spring 2016)
• “A Taste of Spanish America: Reading Suggestions for Teachers of Colonial North America” (Winter 2015)
• “Creative Disorientation: The Challenges of Studying, and Teaching, Atlantic World History” (Summer 2013)
• “Making Sense of the Beginning: Teaching Early America in the U.S. History Survey” (January 2012)

Essays for Moment:

• “Could Jews Vote in Early America?” (October 24, 2020)
• “Confronting Passover, 1865” (March 24, 2020)
• “The Thirty Years’ War’s Legacy for Religious Pluralism” (December 28, 2018)
• “Benjamin Franklin’s Midrash” (March 21, 2018)
• “On Yom HaShoah, Why Don’t We Read All the Names?” (April 23, 2017)

Miscellaneous travel essays and personal essays:

• “Among the Sheep” (2023) (Gold “Animal Encounter” in Solas Awards, 2024)
• “Sightseeing along the Fourth Coast” (2022) (Silver “Destination Story” in Solas Awards, 2023)
• “Serendipity in the Baltic” (2018)
• “Too Long a Wait,” CJ: Voices of Conservative Judaism, 7:3 (Spring 2014): 21-23.
• “Saturday without My Wallet,” Skirt! (2010) [Online version here]

Writing for Perspectives and AHA Today:

• “History Education in Finland: Some Impressions” (May 17, 2018)
• Letter to the editor on “A Mind of One’s Own: Promoting Mental Health among Grad Students” (January 12, 2018)
• “Teaching History in Independent Schools” (November 1, 2007)
• Letter to the editor on “Ph.D.s, Careers, and Schools” (February 1, 2007)

And finally, a bit of humor: “Sabbatical Cat Q&A” (2013) and “Did the Cats Go Too? A Teaching for Noa Kitty’s First Pesach” (2021)