Dr. Laursen teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses, as well as offers public education, such as talks to organizations and institutions.
Academic Teaching
Currently, Dr. Laursen teaches online at the Rhine Education Center. His most recent course was Premonitions, a four-week online course that ran from May 17 to June 7, 2022. From the syllabus for Premonitions:
This four-week course provides humanities-focused, transdisciplinary routes into historical and contemporary experiences, ideas, and studies into premonitions – “a feeling or sense about a future event” (as the experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge and author Theresa Cheung define them in their 2018 book The Premonition Code). While the term premonition is best known, researchers more often use the term precognition to refer to ways of knowing or being influenced by information about future events outside of prediction “using memory, logic or your five senses” (Mossbridge and Cheung). The two words tend to be used interchangeably.
How can we come to terms with meaningful precognitive experiences – whether we ourselves experience precognition firsthand, or if we hear about such experiences from other people, in research, or in popular culture?
We’ll explore how a variety of experiencers, researchers, and societies have worked to make sense of precognition at the boundaries of knowledge-making. What roles do culture, consciousness, and one’s own life contexts have in considering the meaning found in precognitive experiences? In exploring these roles, we’ll gain a better understanding of why precognition matters in an accessible, thought-provoking way.
We’ll consider how precognition becomes discussed and applied on personal, social, and cultural scales. How do precognitive experiences become integrated into individuals’ lives? How are they translated by societies and cultures? How to navigate diverse perspectives, beliefs, and doubts about precognition? You’ll gain tools that you can apply both to advancing your studies of psi as well as exploring experiences.
Past Teaching Experience
From 2017-2021, Dr. Laursen was an instructor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), based in the Departments of History (HST), Philosophy & Religion (PAR), and Graduate Liberal Studies (GLS), and in 2020 at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, where he taught in Cultural Studies (CUST) and Media Studies (MDST). Prior to that, Dr. Laursen taught as part of his graduate education at the University of British Columbia and the University of Guelph.
Please contact him for any information on upcoming and current courses.
Full List of Courses Taught to Date
- CUST-MDST 3538H: Radio Studies
- HST 560: Scientific Revolutions
- HST 560: British Empire
- HST 456/533: Animal History
- HST 329: Haunted Histories
- HST 329: The Supernatural, Religion, and Science
- HST 329: Superhumans: Medicine, Mind, and Body in the Modern World
- HST 205: History of Science I: Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution
- HST 206: History of Modern Science
- HST 103: Global History, 1500-1848
- PAR 103: Intro to Religions
- GLS 598/596: Final Project in Liberal Studies
- GLS 592: Animals & Culture
- GLS 592: Frontier Sciences
- GLS 592: First Contact: Encounters with the Unexpected
- GLS 532: Conservation & Culture
- GLS 522: Shamanism
- GLS 502: Contemporary Issues in Liberal Studies
Background
Since 2008, Dr. Laursen has taught diverse students from humanities and science disciplines, undergraduate and graduate, in-person and online.
He specializes in teaching modern history of religions, history of science, and environmental history courses, as well as early modern and modern global history, and the United States, Britain, and Europe in the modern period.
Some Student Testimonials
The following student testimonials attest to recent students’ overall satisfaction and intellectual enrichment from Dr. Laursen’s classes. The comments are from anonymous surveys of the students conducted at universities in which he taught (original copies available).
“Great professor. Very accessible via email, considerate, and encouraging.”
Dr. Laursen “showed caring for each student through personal e-mails and offered to help in all possible ways. Emails were replied to within the day usually and all the feedback given was useful.”
Dr. Laursen “was very good about trying to form a connection with the students even though this was an online course…. It was very nice to participate in that kind of environment and I think my online participation helped with my learning.”
Dr. Laursen “was very diligent when reading the comments on our discussion board and furthered the conversation with his thought provoking analysis. He also did an extremely thorough job when reading our papers, giving incredibly helpful feedback.”
Dr. Laursen “has been extremely helpful and warm towards us, he is very responsive and reasonable.”
Dr. Laursen “was very helpful throughout the course. He responded to e-mails very quickly and showed genuine concern for student learning…. He was very knowledgeable about the subject matter and his attitude towards the students inspired learning and discussion.”
Dr. Laursen “was one of the most open profs I’ve had. He genuinely cared about our learning…. He went above and beyond for me…. Christopher reminded me that there are good profs out there that will be there for you and encourage learning. It was a breath of fresh air for sure! He made us care about the course and I think we all took something away from it.”
“I really like the essay markups… because he provided constructive feedback and methods to improve our writing.”
Dr. Laursen “was very empathetic and responded with exactly what I needed every time.”
Dr. Laursen “gave me the opportunity and the tools to improve my work, which I am very grateful for.”
“I learned a lot and am now reaping the benefits of better quality papers!”
Christopher Laursen 