Troy D. Smith
As I look at my blog I see I have not posted here since January of this year (2020)... a sad poem about rain, which was an appropriate way to usher in this year, as it turned out. 2020 has brought me more than the usual helping of tragedy, between the death of my younger brother, a painful physical injury that required a lengthy recuperation, and more. The one impact that we all shared, and is most responsible for my absence from blogging, has been Covid-19. Since March, most of my time has been spent producing lecture videos to take the place of my live teaching.
You can see some of these at my youtube channel, ProfTroySmith.
However, I thought I would share this three-part (2 hour) lecture here, in large part because some of my former students from Uni High in Urbana, IL might enjoy seeing me try (in my limited way) to explain my mentor Bill Sutton's Wheel of Respectability. That happens in the second of these three videos.
The videos are titles for their sequence in my Environmental History Class, though they do triple duty (in the Westward Expansion and basic U.S. history classes).
A lot of this is stuff that history buffs (or professional historians) might know, but it might be some new ideas for the lay reader. I hope you enjoy.
Part One: The Market Revolution
Part Two: The Rise of Respectability
Part Three: Respectability, Romanticism, and the Frontier
