History professor wins civic award

Professor Michael Dintenfass was honored recently with the Thomas Burpee Civic Award Feb. 2 for his unorthodox teaching style, involving students as active participants in history.

The Alden Skinner Camp 45 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War presented the award during their monthly meeting in the Rockville, CT Town Hall. This structure, built by Union soldiers, is also where the New England Civil War Museum is housed.

Dintenfass's class, "The History of War in the Modern World," places students in the role of historian and interpreter, requiring them to read poems, diary entries, and short stories or listen to music for each class. They need to write about the selections and be prepared to discuss the "why" behind history. Dintenfass said he structures all his classes this way.

"History of war is the history of what it has meant to be human when life has hung most fretfully in the balance," Dintenfass said.

He centers his course on the people who lived through war and what they felt. Then students must ask themselves why war caused the emotions the person felt and the actions they were moved to make.

According to Dintenfass, he chooses material for his classes very carefully; he said he only wants to assign things that are worth reading.

"I ask myself, what can I do in this class to make it worth the hard-earned tuition money they pay for this class?" Dintenfass said.

His selections are all archived texts that historians have studied to write the textbooks in typical history classes, according to Dintenfass.

"There [are] no tests, no textbooks, no lectures," Dintenfass said.

Instead, students are asked to look at documents from people who were alive during war and were affected by it. He says he sees the class as a cross between a philosophy and literature course, describing it as a humanities course. He believes the purpose of exploring history is to explore the self and understand humanity.

"War is one of those things . where it doesn't leave you comfortable about who you are," Dintenfass said.