Season 5, Episode 3: James MacDonald

American Rambler with Colin Woodward

Once again, Colin plays "Six Degrees of Court Carney," this time with fellow LSU veteran and historian James MacDonald. As is the case with Colin, James is a Damn Yankee who moved to the South as an adult and has never looked back. Oh, and like Colin, he married a southerner.

James teaches at Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches (pronounced "Nackadish"), a town so southern that it was the setting for the film Steel Magnolias. James talks about the teaching life, including how to cope with educating during the pandemic, wrestling with technology, what it's like to handle a 6-5 course load, and the lessons learned and not learned in graduate school. Also, James talks about growing up in New Jersey, visiting battlefields as a kid, his natural love of teaching, first-year grad school monasticism, and the unbearable heaviness of Phil Morgan's Slave Counterpoint.