Assigned to teach a freshman composition course with a history and reading co-requisite, a New York college instructor developed a course in which students would begin to see history--through their reading, writing, and thinking--as a series of events intricately connected with their own lives and ways of looking at the world, rather than something external and unrelated to themselves. Students were given supplementary texts and primary source documents to "personalize" history for them, and they were asked to write essays comparing and contrasting political and social structures, explaining the significance of a historical event, or defining terms in a historical context. After reading John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty," students were asked to write an essay considering how much they conformed to a group, and how much public opinion affected their lives. Moreover, they came to understand biography as a historical document when they were asked to write about an event or person in their own lives that affected the way they viewed the world. They were also asked to examine and compare current controversies, such as the religious war between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects, and offer solutions. The course successfully brought students into an unfamiliar discourse community, and helped them see how writing can be used to make meaning and shape larger world views. (Nineteen references are included.) (JC)