Explore commonly taught topics along with related primary sources, discussion questions, teaching strategies, and annotated bibliographies.
Source Collection: Analyzing Treaties between the Iroquois Confederacy and the English Colonies in the 18th Century
During the 18th century, interactions between native peoples and Europeans were a regular occurrence not just along the colonial frontiers, but in French, English, and Spanish cities across the continent. One of the most powerful Native American nations in the north was the Iroquois Confederacy, or Six Nations.
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Short Teaching Module: Connecting Local and Global History via Mercantile Networks
European merchants spread throughout the world seeking new markets. In doing so, they actively connected remote localities to global networks across multiple continents. Local people around the world often challenged European economic dominance, forcing European merchants to pursue accommodating relationships with local people.
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Short Teaching Module: Using Ships as Guides for Transnational Adventures through World History
Ships travel across oceans and in doing so connect people in disparate places across the globe. In this essay, Brandon Tachco explains how a focus on ships as a theme can add much to the study of world history. As "in between" places like ships are transnational by definition and they provide engaging sources for students to study.
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Short Teaching Module: Premodern Chinese Maps and the Global Maritime World
Premodern Chinese maps offer fascinating sources for teachers and students of world history. As historian Elke Papelitzky explains, these maps can reveal much about the world view of the mapmakers and their audience in China and they also serve as example of how knowledge and skills spread from region to region in the period.
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Short Teaching Module: Shared Space, Shared Experiences: Transnational Water Management around the Great Lakes
World historians sometimes work within a single sub-field, such as migration history or gender history, but they can also bring sub-fields together, as their perspectives, methods, and subject matter cross boundaries.
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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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