Historical thinking, a term that encompasses a diverse set of definitions and competencies, calls on students to replicate the work and cognitive processes of historians by analyzing and interpreting evidence and making logical conclusions based on this evidence. Given this emphasis on discipline-specific skills, "sources" (especially…

Historical fiction is often used as a resource in elementary classrooms to integrate social studies and English-Language Arts (ELA), a practice that teachers often use as a time-saver when schedules are limited for social studies in an elementary classroom. Using historical fiction as a basis for integration can give students more opportunities to…

"Civilization V" is part of the best-selling strategy game series, "Sid Meier's Civilization," which is named after its eponymous creator. The goal of all games in the "Civilization" series is to build a historical empire that can stand the test of time, an objective that has made the series an object of affection for…

This article discusses the authors' experience implementing the use of the online platform Story Maps, which allows students to create digital geographic information systems (GIS) maps of past people, places, and events and combine them with text, images, and other multimedia, in three different undergraduate history courses. The authors found…

In this article, the author will start with discussing what the scholarship of teaching and learning in history has to say about the role that epistemological inquiry should play in the history classroom. The author will then describe the history classroom through the lens of students' beliefs about the nature and source of historical knowledge…

How do history students fare in the job market? This is a pressing question these days, as history departments (along with others in the humanities) suffer declining enrollments and increased administrative and political pressure to justify their existence. As universities increasingly focus on the college-to-career transition, departments whose…

In Maine, where black people are a mere 1.6% of the population today, there once existed a small mixed-race community called Malaga Island. In 1912, the state forcibly evicted Malaga's residents and committed eight to the Maine School for the Feebleminded. The state and the press branded this cruel tragedy a triumph and their interpretation was…

With the (re-)discovery and gradual transcription and translation of native-language primary sources in the twentieth century, a new branch of Mexican ethnohistory developed around Mesoamerican native-language research. This scholarship has profoundly reshaped the understanding of a history that for centuries had followed a Eurocentric paradigm.…

Over the last twenty-five years, the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and Minitex have developed a partnership centered on creating pathways to higher education by engaging local middle school and high school students in immersive programs at academic libraries. These activities vary in scope and content, but…

When Lebanon gained its independence from France in 1943, it adopted a system that divided political power along clearly defined sectarian lines. The institutionalized sectarian nature of the country resulted in tensions that led to civil war in 1975. Lebanon quickly disintegrated into a number of irreconcilable cantons and seemed to be destined…

Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

This article explores what it means for history students to be "wrong" in the classroom, and the important role that error plays in teaching and learning. Student errors are nothing new to instructors. Nor do they often take much notice of them. Many instructors have been scholar-teachers long enough that they accept the inevitability of…

Graphic novels (book-length works of fiction or non-fiction that use the conventions of a comic book to tell a story or convey information) can embed images within that primary flow. The text boxes and recurring images of the single graphic novel flow can incorporate maps, photographs, timelines, primary sources, and images within the panel…

Like many history teachers, Brent Ruswick struggles for ways to lessen his dependence on textbooks while also teaching students to read their textbook with the critical eye of a historian. It is a struggle he has come to appreciate more keenly as, in addition to teaching the standard college-level introductory history courses, he also teaches the…

This essay addresses the challenges of teaching to myths and misperceptions through a discussion of two books that the author uses to frame her course on the history of women and gender in the modern Middle East: (1) Geraldine Brooks' "Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women" (1995); and (2) Heather Raffo's "9 Parts…