|
From
its inception, World History Connected sought a means of providing on-line continuing education for those teaching a
course in world history, particularly the introductory college survey and its
Advanced Placement equivalent.
Last
year, World History Connected’s editors explored the idea of a special “summer supplement” devoted to that
subject. These discussions intensified this spring when it was decided to
pursue a new “Forum” segment three issues a year. In proposing the “Forum”
idea, it occurred to me that instead of a special summer issue, we would instead
devote the Forum section of each summer issue to the greatest needs of teachers
responsible for survey courses at all levels of instruction. We chose to devote
the first of these Forums to assisting those who may have just been assigned to
teach world history in recognition of the fact that many instructors are often
informed in the spring that they will be teaching a world history survey course
for the first time in that fall, leaving them with little time (and usually no institutional
resources) to attend Advanced Placement and regular world history workshops or institutes
over the summer months.
It
is our hope at World History Connected that the first of these June forums will be of service to all those engaged in teaching
world history. Forum Guest editor Ane Lintvedt, in her introduction, highlights
the goals and value of each of the Forum articles, which range from discussions
of assessment strategies to summer reading assignments. Among the “Featured
Articles,” James Diskant’s essay will be no less valuable to “newbies” seeking to
employ active learning strategies to enliven required courses and encourage
“student buy-in” in elective classes. Essays by Marjorie Bingham and Yuan-ling
Chao will expose scholar/teachers and students alike to the complexity of human
relations across lines of ethnicity, religion and gender during times of political
upheaval. Tom Laichas, in the first of a series of essays on music in world history,
attempts to take that subject out of the generic bin of “world music” into the
forefront of the world history classroom. John Maunu offers teachers the means
to literally as well as figuratively open students’ eyes to history through his
review of on-line sources for Virtual History tours.
The
book review section fulfills its usual mission of offering evaluations of works
of value to teacher/scholars of world history, but it is worth drawing
attention to a pair of reviews that shoe how scholars are seeking new “cartographic”
vehicles for their analysis Hilde De Weerdt’s review of Gunnar Olsson’s Abysmal:
A Critique of Cartographic Reason. Weerdt’s review analyzes a challenging
major philosophic undertaking in such a way as to make its contents, as well as
the strengths and weaknesses of its central arguments, accessible to the
general reader, while also establishing the value of this seemingly esoteric
work for all practitioners of world history in terms of identifying how we
“map” our conception of reality. Eric Engel Tuten’s review of John Lewis
Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How
Historians Map the Past indicates that mapping our historical imagination
is so far from being esoteric as to appeal to our visual senses, and offers the
photographs to prove it, to ourselves and to our students.
The
editors at World History Connected are
excited about the journal’s potential to expand the boundaries of world history
scholarship while at the same time disseminating the means by which teachers
can better ignite the fires of learning among students. However, they rely upon
your feedback to validate and critique their efforts. All editors (in the
“Editors” file on the bottom left hand of this page) and authors (at the
conclusion of their articles) have provided their email addresses. Contact them,
let them know if they are serving your needs, and consider making your own
contributions to World History Connected through the submission of an idea, article or other material that may be
fashioned into a form that can advance the field in terms of both scholarship
and teaching.
Marc Jason Gilbert can be contacted at
mgilbert@hpu.edu |
|
