In this article, the author details an undergraduate senior seminar titled "History and Literature," for which the main project was a close reading of a big book: Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862). Despite reservations about the style of the material, the "great books" approach to teaching, and the challenge of compelling…

This article describes the account of a "European Queens" course as an example of the intellectual growth available to both the professor and the student when an instructor uses engaged, responsive teaching to address apparently incommensurable understandings of a given topic. The author outlines how the study of premodern queens relates…

Few academic disciplines have undergone the academic scrutiny that history has since the end of the Second World War. A growing consensus among historians has emerged to the effect that, if history is to be revitalized, it will require recognition of the disconnect between popular and professional, as well as an embracing of innovative methods of…

Art can be of great benefit for students to learn about history. This article presents results of a three-year research project at the university level on the use of specific examples from the arts for a variety of courses in U.S. and European history as well as a course on history methods. All the examples used consisted of images (painting and…

Some historians still hold back from assigning literature out of concern for historical accuracy, but using fiction and popular culture is no longer unusual and, if anything, using novels may be seen as outdated in some circles. The author suggests that one way to reinvigorate the use of the novel when teaching history is to center a class on only…

In 2003, as the term "globalization" became ubiquitous in scholarship and popular culture, Peter N. Stearns urged readers of "The History Teacher" to address the concept in their pedagogy. Scholars and teachers took up the challenge, dedicating an immense amount of effort to debating, defining, and explaining the term…

This article describes a book review assignment that is an application of enlightenment practices to a modern learning environment. This paper encourages both student learning in the content of enlightenment ideas and the methods of critical, accessible writing. Students engage in metacognition by using the critical reasoning capacities of their…

In this article, the authors detail a curriculum unit used by Ms. Brown and a second English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, Ms. Smith, with their high school students. The unit centered on a comparative genocide framework developed by the Comparative Genocide Project at Arizona State University. The framework detailed seven key themes common across…

The aim of this article is to examine the frameworks that educators use, especially how they conclude teaching and learning about genocide, and to suggest readings and other sources for use. The narrative arc that educators establish by choosing where to begin and where to end is a powerful indicator of their course goals and teaching rationales.…

Visual History Archive, or VHA, is the world's largest database of videotaped and digitized Holocaust video testimony. The VHA originated with filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who consulted camp survivors when making his blockbuster film "Schindler's List" in 1993. Inspired by this collaboration, Spielberg went on to establish the Survivors…

The author discusses their experiences teaching an upper-division seminar course in a traditional face-to-face setting, and re-designing a "long eighteenth century" survey course for delivery online. The article thus explores spatial strategies in both face-to-face and online courses, and suggests ways in which they can be particularly…

War is one place where the complexity of victory and defeat should be explored more deeply. Unfortunately, war--whether experienced directly as a soldier in Afghanistan or a Syrian in an Aleppo suburb, or indirectly through a news item on the Internet or American television--is a near inescapable aspect of most people's daily life. Yet unless…

Educators at the secondary school level who teach History, or Integrated Social Studies more broadly, may be expected to possess at least some passing knowledge of the Holocaust, the genocide perpetrated against European Jews by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet, when it comes to the Pacific War and Japanese war crimes and atrocities…

The author of this essay argues that historians should join their colleagues in the sciences in creating supportive environments for undergraduate research. Despite the apparent hurdles to overcome, historians can devise effective undergraduate research experiences that mimic those occurring in the chemistry, biology, and psychology labs across…

The success of Britain's "Kindertransport," the British child rescue scheme, required legal negotiations, multifaceted organizational efforts, hands-on, spontaneous work of individuals and fierce determination of desperate parents. While moral responsibility motivated some of these actors, a sense of religious, cultural or familial duty…