Uncovering World History Volume One

Description

What proficiencies should history majors possess when they graduate? What threshold skills should a student bring to the history major? What competencies does a lower-division history course provide as part of a liberal education or a general education program? How can these capabilities and aptitudes be taught in the short class time, constrained circumstances, and diverse classrooms of today's universities?

These are questions that matter deeply to history instructors seeking strategies that embrace the teaching of historical competencies for student success and lifelong achievement and at the same time produce a durable understanding of the lessons and themes that can only come from an appreciation of the past. Over the past decade, Trevor Getz has made the argument that content can be interwoven with skills in carefully designed modules that are delivered to students by in an affordable and engaging, active-learning environment. The result is Uncovering World History, a series of digital modules designed to make History meaningful and memorable for students by teaching them the skills to "Do History."

Table of Contents

1) "The Amarna Age: What Can Ancient Letters Tell Us About Their Authors?" (Dennis Campbell, San Francisco State University)
This module covers the 14th century BCE, in the ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, as well as Syria and the Levant). Using excerpts from letters between ancient kings, students will explore the relationship between these powerful rulers (the so-called great kings, which included the pharaoh) as well as that between the pharaoh and his vassals in the Levant/Syria. The methodological focus of this module is to teach students how to use epistolary material to understand history.


2) "How Should We Tell the History of the Mongol Empire? (Roxann Prazniak, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon)
Rashid al-Din (1247-1318) wrote what some have considered to be the first world history, the Jami' al-Tavarikh. Selections from this work generate discussion about what constitutes a world history. Analysis of visual evidence is the primary area of skill development for this module.


3) The Many Faces of Sir Francis Drake: Global Pirate or National Hero? (Kris Lane, Tulane University)
The story of Francis Drake in world history begs many questions, but perhaps it is at core a question of who owns history, or who "curates" the legacy of a national hero (or in the case of Spain, a favorite villain)? Drake is a classic 'national hero' vs. 'arch-villain.'

The principal objective of this module is to examine a wide range of sources relating to Drake's Famous Voyage (1577-1580) in order to draw our own conclusions regarding Drake's conduct and the ways in which interpretation of his achievements changed over time.

Students who successfully complete this unit will demonstrate the ability to evaluate contradictory evidence and opposing interpretations, producing an original, historical argument that takes into account the shifting politics of legend formation.



4) Making History: How Do Historians Turn Evidence into Narratives?" (Felicia Viator and Trevor Getz, San Francisco State University)
The first central question the module helps students examine is: "How do historians and other scholars create, contest, and modify narratives as a way of interpreting the past?" The second question, a related but much broader one, is: "How do we use stories to understand the past?"

This module introduces students to the competencies that demonstrate an awareness of the constructed, contested, and contingent nature of historical narratives/interpretations. To that end, students will learn key skills regularly employed by historians, including contexualization, periodization, causality, historical empathy, source analysis, and evaluation of secondary sources. At a more advanced level, students will have the opportunity to practice constructing their own narratives and them subject them to claims testing.