In this article, the author attempts to connect two events--the wartime incarceration of the Japanese Americans and Americans' contemporary regret for that action--in a narrative that also tries to answer the most difficult kind of question that a historian can ask: How does change occur? How did it come about that what had been a popular wartime…

The College Board's Advanced Placement European History examination has evolved over the course of its first half-century of existence in virtually all respects: the types and subject matter of questions asked (and not asked); the nature of the history those questions reflect; the number of questions both offered and to be answered, as well as how…

In this article, the author shares his experience and the challenges he faced in teaching an inclusive American history to Canary Islands students. The author teaches two undergraduate courses related to the U.S., plus a graduate course in American culture and political liberalism. Presently, eleven credits (two semester courses) serve as the…

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, "The History Teacher" published several articles on the importance and process of integrating women's history into "regular history." Now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the author suggests to add a new perspective as to how teachers think about and teach gender in the classroom.…

Low scores in national testing demonstrated that a need existed to improve history education. During the late 1980s and early 1990s a debate ensued. While many different opinions existed as to why this was happening, differences also were expressed as to the solutions. Traditionally, history teachers had utilized the textbook-lecture approach in…

During the Fall term, 2001, the author taught a new course intended to develop a diversity of close reading skills among his students. An integral component of the course involved the exploration of memory and history. As the fate of the syllabus would have it, right after the September attacks he taught Sarah Farmer's "Martyred Village:…

In this article, the author tries to create inspirational experiences for his students through "Backyard Battles," a course he has taught for the last four years through the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. The main purpose of this course is to help students recognize that the primary and secondary sources which…

In this article, the author shares his own reflections on his forty-odd years of teaching history at the college level. He shares one of the most important things he learned during his career as a history teacher: Instructors should make clear to their students at the beginning of any survey course what it is that they expect their students to…

Historians are living in a challenging era. As products of the age of print, teachers must find effective ways to introduce the study of history, an academic discipline embedded in the conventions and understandings of print media, to students whose facility with the print world is limited. It is electronic media with which they are most familiar.…

In this article, the author describes the summer institute which she planned through her involvement with the Institute for Freedom Studies at Northern Kentucky University, whose purpose is to promote interdisciplinary research, teaching and community outreach grounded in the study of the Underground Railroad. The purpose of the institute was to…

One educational area that has greatly benefited from the growth of technology is historical studies. Since the initial development of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, tens of millions of historical documents have been placed online. During that time the quality and range of historical documents available on the Web has steadily increased.…

In this article, the author looks closely at the recent history of the East African coast and the Swahili people who live there. In doing so he hopes to highlight the inadequacy of the area studies/continentalist approach to studying and teaching the Swahili and to propose a different way of considering their past. His contention is that one can…

There has been an unmistakably more cosmopolitan approach to American history among scholars of the past two decades. This essay addresses the issue concerning the future of United States survey course as American history moves toward internationalization. Proponents of internationalization themselves disagree about the future of the United States…

For over thirty years, teaching the United States history survey course has been the focus of the author's professional life. At both the high school and college level, he has introduced students to the sweep of American history from Jamestown to Watergate. During those years, he has grappled with the conundrum of how to make this often-unwieldy…

For history teachers, the Web seems ubiquitous these days. Many of them are completely accustomed to drawing on Web-based resources, constructing their own Web materials, engaging in various kinds of distance learning activities, and hearing colleagues talk about it whether or not they want to listen. It wasn't always this way, of course. The…