Review of AMH 2020 - Bradley Toner
The semester is slowly wrapping up and I can honestly say this was one of my most enjoyable history courses I have ever taken. There is just something about Dr. Morton that really stands out from other history professors in a positive way. He is able to teach a bunch of college students history and not put us all to sleep because he is able to do the exact opposite; He makes us laugh and enjoy his course. There is nothing standard by Dr. Morton and a perfect example is this history blog. I can’t say ive ever heard ANYONE assigning students the task of making a history blog as a part of the course. But this history blog was fantastic in the fact that it was fun and enjoyable yet still made me work and become more intrigued into history topic I probably never would’ve dug deeper exploring.
One topic that really stood out to me was President Roosevelt and his journey as becoming president. Dr. Morton was successfully able to compare Roosevelt to batman (yes the superhero) and made the class enjoy learning about the invasion of Cuba and the freedom riders. As for Dr. Morton’s bias in the course it showed, but when it showed we knew that he was deeply passionate about a certain topic which made us become more intrigued.
I can’t say that we missed any major topic that happened in history however I wish Dr. Morton would’ve been able to teach us about Vietnam. As the course is only 16 weeks long, we were forced to stop after World War II.
My favorite assignment would have to be the extra credit I did back in the first month going to a history conference. Being the youngest person in the room by at least 20 years was quite the interesting experience and I was able to see the passion some people still have for events that took place many many years ago. As for my least favorite assignment I honestly can’t think of one that I dreaded doing. All of his assignments took max 2.5 hours and were enjoyable and not repetitive because every assignment was based off of a new topic.
With Dr. Morton being a film junkie at heart he really tried to show us how history is expressed in film and the media. After seeing how many people used the media to express and tell stories back in the creation of the United States it showed me that without media the United States would be a completely different nation.
Finally I would like to thank Dr. Morton for this amazing semester. Not only was he able to teach a bunch of crazy college kids about the expansion and involvement of the United States in this world, he made it enjoyable with all of his jokes and perspectives that we really had never experienced before. I can easily say this course will go down as one of the most interesting courses I have taken.