July 2024: Resource Spotlight - World History
Because of its breadth, world history can be a challenging subject for new teachers. However, even seasoned teachers can be tested when transitioning to a world history curriculum in courses that previously focused on Western civilizations. Over the last several years, the CHSSP has worked to improve instructional resources on global histories and increase equitability in world history curriculum. Many of the resources highlighted here were written by CHSSP’s Dr. Shennan Hutton, who has also authored blogs on sources for 7th-grade world history and world history resources to teach in California.
Two CHSSP graduate student interns, Daniel Castaneda and Emma Chapman, just presented at the 2024 conference of the World History Association (WHA) on the panels "New Currents in Graduate Education” and "Identity and Representation in World History,” respectively. Chapman's presentation focused on her experience helping with a recent UC Davis Marchand History Lab, in which undergraduates constructed a digital exhibit on the greater Asian experience of Japanese imperial ambitions in the early 20th century. You can read more about the lab and follow future Marchand History Lab updates here. The same page will also soon be home to more information on an upcoming history lab, Diverse Narratives: The Middle East in Historical Context.
Recent scholarship:
The Story of Nature: a Human History, Jeremy Mynott (2024)
From Yale University Press:
“The story of humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world from pre-history to the present day.Nature has long been the source of human curiosity and wonderment, and the inspiration for some of our deepest creative impulses. But we are now witnessing its rapid impoverishment, even destruction, in much of our world... In this beautifully illustrated book, Jeremy Mynott traces the story of nature—past, present and future. From the dramatic depictions of animals by the prehistoric cave-painters, through the romantic discovery of landscape in the eighteenth century, to the climate emergency of the present day, Mynott looks at the different ways in which humankind has understood the world around it. Charting how our ideas about nature emerged and changed over time, he reveals how the impulse to control nature has deep historical roots.”
Great Kingdoms of Africa, Edited by John Parker, Foreword by David Adjaye (2023)
From the University of California Press:
“This is the first book for nonspecialists to explore the great precolonial kingdoms of Africa that have been marginalized throughout history. Great Kingdoms of Africa aims to decenter European colonialism and slavery as the major themes of African history and instead explore the kingdoms, dynasties, and city-states that have shaped cultures across the African continent. This groundbreaking book offers an innovative and thought-provoking overview that takes us from ancient Egypt and Nubia to the Zulu Kingdom almost two thousand years later. Each chapter is written by a leading historian, interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including oral histories and recent archaeological findings. Great Kingdoms of Africa is a timely and vital book for anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of Africa's rich history.”
Translating Faith: Ethiopian Pilgrims in Renaissance Rome, Samantha Kelly (2024)
From Harvard University Press:
“Tucked behind the apse of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome is the ancient church of Santo Stefano. During the sixteenth century, Santo Stefano hosted an unusual community: a group of Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims whose faith and culture were both like and unlike those of Latin Europe. The pilgrims of Santo Stefano were the only African community in premodern Europe to leave extensive documents in their own language (Gǝʿǝz). They also frequently collaborated with Latin Christians to disseminate their expert knowledge of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Christianity, negotiating the era’s heated debates over the boundaries of religious belonging.”
A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History: Ten Design Principles, Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow (2024)
From Duke University Press:
“A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment.”
Destroy Them Gradually: Displacement as Atrocity, Andrew R. Bosso (2024)
From Rutgers University Press:
“Perpetrators of mass atrocities have used displacement to transport victims to killing sites or extermination camps to transfer victims to sites of forced labor and attrition, to ethnically homogenize regions by moving victims out of their homes and lands, and to destroy populations by depriving them of vital daily needs. Displacement has been treated as a corollary practice to crimes committed, not a central aspect of their perpetration. Destroying Them Gradually examines four cases that illuminate why perpetrators have destroyed populations using displacement policies: Germany’s genocide of the Herero (1904–1908); Ottoman genocides of Christian minorities (1914–1925); expulsions of Germans from East/Central Europe (1943–1952); and climate violence (twenty-first century).”
Teaching the Eighteenth Century Now: Pedagogy as Ethical Engagement, Edited by Kate Parker and Miriam L. Wallace (2023)
From Rutgers University Press:
“In this timely collection, teacher-scholars of “the long eighteenth century,” a Eurocentric time frame from about 1680 to 1832, consider what teaching means in this historical moment: one of attacks on education, a global contagion, and a reckoning with centuries of trauma experienced by Black, Indigenous, and immigrant peoples. Taking up this challenge, each essay highlights the intellectual labor of the classroom, linking textual and cultural materials that fascinate us as researchers with pedagogical approaches that engage contemporary students.”
Featured Teaching Resources:
To investigate the connections between Egypt, Mesopotamia, and societies in the surrounding lands between 4000 and 500 BCE, this 6th-grade primary source set contains sources about trade, conflict and conquest, and the spread of technology, while demonstrating how connections generally grew more extensive over time. Students respond to the inquiry question, “From 4000 BCE to 500 BCE, how did contact, trade, and other links grow among the urban societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Kush, India, and the eastern Mediterranean?”
Reframing Modern World History
Explore this reframing of the Modern World History curriculum that investigates the global causes and consequences of the industrial revolution and colonialism, and the resulting climate crisis we face today, while highlighting alternate visions for a sustainable and more just future.
Religious Influences on the Roman Empire
This inquiry set for 6th-grade students focuses on religious beliefs and practices to show how other cultures and civilizations (Greece, Persia, Egypt, and other Near Eastern cultures) influenced Ancient Rome. With the examples of Diana, Cybele, Isis, and Mithras, students explore mystery cults and religious syncretism, responding to the inquiry question, “How did other societies (the Greeks, Hellenistic states, Han China, and Parthian Persia) influence and affect the Romans?”
Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World
Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World is part of CHSSP’s History Blueprint collection, which features entire classroom units with step-by-step instructions, interactive maps, and all related teaching materials. This unit introduces 7th-grade students to the connections between regions and people in Afro-Euroasia (the “world”) between 1000 and 1500 (the “medieval” period.) The lessons immerse students in sites of encounter – Sicily, Quanzhou, Cairo, Mali, Majorca, and Calicut - where merchants, travelers, and scholars exchanged products, technologies, and ideas. In addition, this unit teaches students how to read, write, and think historically, analyze historical evidence from primary and secondary sources, and make interpretations.
This inquiry set for 7th-grade students uses two cultural productions - the Ramayana and representations of Buddhist and Hindu religious figures - to give students tangible evidence of the transmission of religious ideas and practices, as well as cultural styles of art and architecture from South Asia to Southeast Asia. It also offers an economical way to expose students to Hinduism, Buddhism, the Gupta and Mughal empires, and several major movements in South and Southeast Asian religion and history from 300 to 1700.
This primary source set is designed to be the first student inquiry of the 10th-grade course, with the first framework unit asking students to review the world in 1750. It highlights power relations in this age of absolute monarchy, focusing on areas such as the Mughal Empire, China, France, and Russia. In particular, students are asked to focus on unequal social structures, such as class distinctions, racial slavery, forced labor, and serfdom, and respond to the inquiry question: how were most societies organized in the 1700s?
Why and How Was the Cold War Fought?
This Cold War unit is also part of CHSSP’s History Blueprint series. There are two strands to this unit – one for 10th-grade world history students and one for 11th-grade U.S. history students. Students learn how the Cold War, the four-decade-long ideological, diplomatic, military, and cultural struggle that started between the Soviet Union and the United States, touched nearly every country on Earth. Through each strand, students recognize both the international and domestic ramifications of the Cold War. (Plus, the Cold War is one of many great ways to bring international/world history into a U.S. history classroom!)
Revolutions in the Atlantic World
This 10th-grade inquiry set contains eight written sources to compare the revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and Latin America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There are two sources for each revolution, with the first source focusing on the reasons for wanting independence and the second source on some of the political changes made by the revolution. The set aims to help students understand the desire for revolution and the transfer of revolutionary ideas and fervor across borders, oceans, and continents.
This source set for 12th-grade economics students focuses on the rise of economic globalization. Using Nike as a case study of globalization, students examine the costs and benefits of a worldwide business as measured by the impact on the individual workers and the national economies involved. Students respond to the inquiry question, “How does globalization affect international and national economies and individuals?”
Picture Books #KatesBookClub:
A Land of Books: Dreams of Young Mexihcah Word Painters by Duncan Tonatiuh
A young Aztec girl tells her little brother how their parents create beautiful painted manuscripts, or codices. She explains to him how paper is made from local plants and how the long paper is folded into a book. Her parents and others paint the codices to tell the story of their people’s way of life, documenting their history, science, tributes, and sacred rituals. The book documents that Aztecs and their neighbors in the Valley of Mexico painted books and records long before Columbus arrived, and continued doing so among their Nahua-speaking descendants for generations after the “Spanish Conquest.”
Bartali’s Bicycle: The True Story of Gino Bartali, Italy’s Secret Hero by Megan Hoyt
“Elbows in. Head down, Face to the wind.” Gino Bartali pedaled across Italy for years, winning one cycling race after another, including the 1938 Tour de France, becoming an international sports hero. But the next year, World War II began, changing everything. Gino’s greatest achievement was something he never told a soul—that he secretly worked with the Italian resistance to save hundreds of Jewish men, women, children, and others, from certain death, using the one thing no authority would question: his bicycle. Fascinating story.
Cantora: Mercedes Sosa, the Voice of Latin America by Melisa Fernandez Nitsche
Story of Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa whose songs about the injustices faced by many workers and families in Latin America made her a popular figure in the region. Mercedes was often called the “voice of the voiceless ones” and had a career that spanned over four decades, including a period of exile.
Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter by Aida Salazar
Remarkable true story about pf Jovita Valdovinos, a Mexican revolutionary who disguised herself as a man to fight for religious freedoms during the Cristero War in the 1920s. Written by her great-niece and Américas Award–winner Aida Salazar, and Eisner Award–honoree Molly Mendoza. Caldecott Honor Book, 2024. Also available in Spanish.
Nour’s Secret Library by Wafa’ Tarnowska
Forced to take shelter when their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin begin to bravely build a secret underground library. Based on the author's own life experience and inspired by a true story. Nour's Secret Library is about the power of books to heal, transport, and create safe spaces during difficult times. Based on the author's own life experience and inspired by a true story. Timely read.
The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren
Dramatic story of neighbors in a small Danish fishing village who shelter a Jewish family waiting to be ferried to safety in Sweden during the Holocaust. The villagers devise a clever and unusual plan (the whispering of neighbors) for the family’s safe passage to the harbor. Based on a true story. Would be great to pair with a novel study of Under the Stars by Lois Lowry. Also would be a good teachable moment for students to see how the author uses whispering to build the plot.
Further Reading:
Arab American Curriculumwork, Beshara Kehdi, The Journal of Arab American Studies, Johns Hopkins University Press, June 2023, Pages 185-193,