Professor Loomis, Why Are Your Classes Always So Depressing?

This question was posed to me tonight after doing a showing of Toll of the Sea, a 1922 film about a Chinese woman who falls in love and has a child with an American man. He then leaves and brings back his white wife. His spurned Chinese lover gives the child to the wife to be raised as an American and then throws herself in the ocean. It's not a great film but it is a very interesting film to get at orientalism and race relations during the early 20th century.

The question is kind of disturbing. But I stand by answer--Because the past is depressing.

Seriously, is there any other way to teach history classes? I guess I could be triumphalist or something but I would be lying to myself and to the students. I don't want to be depressing, but I want to teach with passion. My passion and interest goes to the nitty gritty filth of American history. Sometimes this can be outrageous, sometimes it can be horrifying, but it doesn't give a very flattering look at US history.

The classes I teach don't help. Environmental history is not exactly a barrel of laughs. Neither is labor history. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is fucked up in all kinds of ways, but for every powerpoint presentation of giant beards, hilarious advertisements, and ridiculous silent films, there is an equal amount of discussions on lynching, eugenics, prostitution, child abuse, etc.

What else is there to talk about? How awesome Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were? Not when I can't get over the fact that they were horrible individuals. How great the expansion of American democracy was? Not when in reality that meant brutally raping and killing thousands of Filipino, invading Latin American countries, and overthrowing elected democracies.

I guess it's my curse to teach like this. I just hope the students like it OK.