Greetings. My name is Sean Murphy, and I am currently in my first year at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. I earned my B.A. at Rutgers in History in 1999, and a Masters in Modern European History from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. Since then, I have worked in the test preparation industry, mostly as an instructor, tutor, and curriculum creator for the LSAT and GMAT exams. But my real passion has always been history, so I am excited to begin a second career as a high school social studies teacher.

One debate that keeps recurring in our field is whether our courses should focus on “decentering” the history of Europeans and white Americans and focus on the history of minorities and other oppressed groups. One criticism of this approach is that it risks making history too much of a niche field that ignores the big events of history that students need to know to be educated citizens. One topic I think shows that this is a false choice is that of the Haitian Revolution. The Haitian Revolution is rarely studied in high school, or even undergraduate, history classes, yet its impact on global and U.S. history is profound. Constructing this site has been a real labor of love for me, as it reflects much of the recent research that has significantly affected my thinking about development of 19th century history. I want my teaching to show that we can, in fact we must, teach the history of enslavement and oppression as well as the global history of revolution and empire and show how they are inseparable, as the case of the Haitian Revolution demonstrates.

Click here to learn about the history of the Haitian Revolution

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