Courses | Teaching Philosophy | Information for Students
Dr. Palmer's interests in long-durée history have led her to study and teach an unusually broad range of time periods. She has taught courses on the Renaissance and Reformation, on Intellectual History and the Craft of History Writing. During her graduate career at Harvard, she has taught sections in general surveys of Western Civilization, in specialized courses on ancient, medieval, early modern and modern intellectual history, in a course on the Italian Renaissance, and in the History Department’s tutorial program. She particularly enjoys teaching intellectual history survey courses, working closely with a single group of students as they trace the history of Western thought from the pre-Socratics to modern times.
Dr. Palmer's teaching focuses on leading students to grapple with the concept that not all times and places thought as they think, as well as on methods of analytic writing, since the majority of students will never become historians, but all benefit from improved their writing and thinking skills.