Explore commonly taught topics along with related primary sources, discussion questions, teaching strategies, and annotated bibliographies.
Long Teaching Module: Masculinity and Femininity in the Mongol Empire
This module examines ideals of masculinity and femininity among the Mongols, the Central Asian nomadic pastoralists who in the thirteenth century under their leader Chinggis Khan created the largest land-based empire the world has ever seen.
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Source Collection: Analyzing Historic Churches in the Southwestern US
Today, the US-Mexico border stretches along the path of the Rio Grande River. However, much of the territory that now makes up the Southwestern states of the US once belonged to the Spanish Crown. Studying the historic churches of Texas helps reveal this history.
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Short Teaching Module: Cultural Exchange Before Modern Times
Cultural exchange is an integral part of human history and change over time. As cultures have interacted and traded with one another, ideas and goods have spread, wars broken out, and information shared. One way this patterning can be studied historically is by tracing the spread of objects over time.
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Short Teaching Module: A Human History of Commodities
A commodity is a material that can be bought and sold- and it doesn't automatically have to be a raw agricultural good. Historians have focused on commodities as an insight into past economies, as well as the connections between places and goods via trade in order to better understand capitalism as well as the Columbian exchange.
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Short Teaching Module: Constantine and Christianity
Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E.), a Jewish religious thinker who according to Christian Scripture lived in Judaea, a province of the Roman Empire. Accounts of his life and teachings spread orally and then in writing, among men and women from all social classes.
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Short Teaching Module: The Legacy of Charlemagne through the Ages
Teaching about the interplay of history and memory is fascinating. This is particularly true in an age when students are so highly attuned to source bias through news, life experience, online and social media interactions, and of course, learning about such issues in school.
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Long Teaching Module: Inca Society
In South America in the centuries before 1500, the Peruvian coast and Andean highlands were home to a series of cultures that cultivated cotton as well as food crops. Of these, the largest empire was created by the Incas, who began as a small militaristic group and conquered surrounding groups.
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