Guides on commonly taught topics in world history along with selected primary and secondary sources, discussion questions, teaching strategies, differentiation, interactive activities, and annotated bibliographies.
Long Teaching Module: American Indigenous Civilizations, Values of Early Americans: Making Sense of the Aztecs, Incas, Iroquois, Mayan, and Pueblo
In order to understand the diversity of civilizations that had existed in the area of the world that became known as the Americas (after Amerigo Vespucci’s alleged discovery of the area in the early 16th century) what better way than to have students look closely at a range of sources themselves from a representative sample of these civilizations and present material to the rest of the class on
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Short Teaching Module: Cleopatra, Gender, Beauty and Power in Egypt and Rome
Our most important early sources on Cleopatra are Roman histories, which are problematic in their reliability. Cleopatra held the status as the “enemy” for Romans, which created a bias among Roman authors. Moreover, Rome’s patriarchal culture influenced writers’ views of a powerful female ruler.
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Short Teaching Module: Indian Ocean Trading System, 1200 – 1450: The Power of Peaceful Exchanges: A Simulation
This simulation allows students to use their creative intelligence, as well as their ability to uncover archaeological and historical puzzles to work with primary sources, artifacts, and, as importantly, each other to show the power of exchange.
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Short Teaching Module: The Kongolese and the Portuguese, 1482 – 1526
In order best to understand the nuances of the development of the transatlantic slave trade, a case study approach challenges students to think conceptually. This teaching module focuses on the period from 1482 – 1526 and allows students to investigate its development in the Kongo Kingdom, and the ways in which Kongolese traders interacted with the Portuguese both in the Kongo and in Portugal.
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Syllabus: Women and Gender in World History, 600-2000
The syllabus below lays out a 15-week course, beginning in the 6th century and continuing through the 20th century. It provides suggestions for how to use units and their various parts with your students, as some of the materials are student-facing, and others are instructor-facing.
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Teaching Cluster: Women and Empire
This teaching cluster assembles an array of primary and secondary sources, as well as teaching strategies and lesson plans, for educators to effectively teach the important roles women played in colonial and imperial projects from the 17th century to the 20th century.
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Long Teaching Module: The Collapse of Yugoslavia
This case study examines the rewriting and reworking of Serbian national history that accompanied the breakup of Communist Yugoslavia, especially by intellectuals, and the role such groups played in reconstructing and resurrecting a distinct narrative of Serbia’s national history.
This long teaching module includes an activity and two primary sources.
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Source Collection: Slavery and the Haitian Revolution
Since the revolutionaries explicitly proclaimed liberty as their highest ideal, slavery was bound to come into question during the French Revolution. Even before 1789 critics had attacked the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. France had several colonies in the Caribbean in which slavery supported a plantation economy that produced sugar, coffee, and cotton.
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Source Collection: War, Terror, and Resistance to the French Revolution
One fault line that has divided inquiries into the Terror has been its connections to the democracy introduced in 1789. For some, the Terror had to occur, either to sweep away the remnants of the Old Regime or, from a more critical perspective, because the revolutionaries had inadvertently introduced authoritarianism with their seeming democratic principles.
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