In recent years, disciplinary literacy has offered a promising approach to history instruction in K-12 schools. Disciplinary literacy in history (hereafter, "historical literacy") entails approaching texts with an awareness of the interpretive nature of the field, reading and analyzing a variety of primary and secondary sources in discipline-specific ways, and constructing arguments and narratives using the linguistic and visual modes of communication valued within the discipline. However, despite the important scholarship on historical literacy teaching and learning that has emerged in recent years, few studies focus on historical literacy specific to the subject of world history. The aim of this article is to define disciplinary literacy in world history, or world historical literacy, identifying how it is similar to and different from historical literacy practices in national or regional histories.