Reina Pennington

It all started with a hat.

More than twenty years ago, a colleague, for unknown reasons, had this Bad Ass Historian baseball cap made for me.

Too bad I rarely wear baseball caps! But it was a great ornament in my office, where it could be seen by students who weren’t so sure that doing history was serious work. 

Several of my courses included in-class “team quizzes” or debates; they didn’t count towards grades, but winning teams got some sort of prize. After a semester or two of taking teams out for lunch, I did the math and realized that a tangible prize would be a better option. I had some “Bad Ass Historian” mugs made up, and passing one around the first week of class to show what the stakes were for team quizzes seemed to make participation even more lively.

“Bad Ass Historian” mugs became a prized possession (at least for some students), with a few managing to collect two or even three over the years. Some students even claimed they took one of my classes mainly to get a shot at winning a mug. (A few mugs made their way into the hands of my colleagues as well.)

In my Second World War class, students were divided into teams for the major participants in the war. Each was given a folder to hold the weekly papers required in class. One student on Team Soviet Union illustrated his folder. I guess that’s supposed to be me at the podium . . . If you look closely, you’ll spot a “Bad Ass Historian” mug in the hand of one of the soldiers.

Where does the second mug come in? When I retired after 23 years of teaching at Norwich, my department gave me this wonderful mug!