It was a quest that began over three decades ago when the author began teaching at the Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute (OSCVI) in 1984. The school had a long, storied history dating back to 1856 when it first opened its doors to students from Owen Sound and the surrounding area. As a teacher of a survey course in Canadian history…

Food is perfectly positioned to link students' lives to the deep and broad historical forces around them. Like everybody else, students procure and consume food on a daily basis, use it to mark special occasions, share it with friends, enjoy or dispute it with families, all perhaps without ever considering its potential for historical analysis.…

World history education as a type of cultural production has expanded globally in the past thirty years. This article surveys world history as a component of curricula in universities, colleges, and precollegiate schools in several parts of the world. The author argues that teachers and scholars in the United States pioneered this field and that…

In particular, the study of history--its scope, reliance on analytical narrative, and methodology of tracing change and continuity over time--provides for an exchange of meaningful narratives. As historians Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier argue, "All cultures, all peoples, tell stories about themselves, and it is these stories that help…

Due to the particular experiences of the African continent and its peoples, and the myriad of ways these experiences have been interpreted, appropriated, and reclaimed, there are a pressing series of epistemological, pedagogical, and ethical challenges, especially for those who wish to include African content in predominantly non-Africanist…

In November of 2016, Laurent Dubois discussed the importance of Haiti in writing the history of slavery, freedom, and human rights in the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolutions for Aeon. He explained that histories of modern political thought and culture underestimated the Haitian Revolution due to the lack of written sources by the enslaved…

In January of 1968, Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek introduced a program of unprecedented economic and political liberalization, intending to revitalize the nation. The eight months of freedom provided by the leadership of Dubcek revealed to the citizens of Czechoslovakia not only that autonomy was universally desired, but also that it was…

Born-digital sources are, in fact, already old enough to fall into the domain of traditional, albeit recent, history. Bulletin Board Systems date from the 1980s. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) launched the first website and server in 1990. Websites and the new digital media are cultural artefacts. Archivists and librarians…

In this article, the authors explore the nature of film that is both "about" and now more often made "for/by" indigenous peoples and its potential as a medium for introducing and engaging students in the study of indigenous history and perspectives in secondary classrooms. As a framework for analysis, the authors examine to…

In a typical high school World History course, the teacher must teach thousands of years of human history in one year, thus making it the most comprehensive history course offered in school. Given the extended content requirements in a World History course, individual topics are given little time before the class must "move on" to the…

Given California's role in the Pacific economy, its historic Asian heritage, and the strong and growing presence of Asian communities and businesses in the state, it is imperative that students statewide understand the history of Asia. Unfortunately, the California state curricular framework and standards in history and social science limit the…

Scholars have long recognized that the Great War produced a remarkable amount of artistic and cultural expression ranging from poetry to painting to novels to architecture. This cultural production, both during and after the war, reflected a deep need to define and understand the tremendous destruction caused by a war that demanded a level of…

This article presents an analysis of the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall which reveals that both grew from unique political, historical, geographical, cultural, and economic circumstances. The purpose of this article is to provide new arguments for a debate that all too often has been waged with emotions, polemics, and misinformation. The…

This paper seeks to explore the ways in which "lessons of history," in particular the "Munich analogy," have been misconstrued in justification of United States armed intervention since the beginning of the Cold War. While the wisdom of a hawkish foreign policy is indeed one lesson of Munich--certainly as applied to World War…

According to the California Department of Education's Curriculum Framework, the secondary curriculum for grades nine through twelve is geared toward students who are beginning "to develop [an] abstract understanding of historical causality--the often complex patterns of relationships between historical events, their multiple antecedents, and…