Empire and its related themes of conquest, colonization, decolonization, and cultural imperialism loom large in the teaching of any history course on European, African, Asian, or Latin American history. "How to Hide an Empire" by Daniel Immerwahr argues that the image (North) Americans have of their nation is that of what scholar…

The purpose of this article is to give the history teacher who is interested in or passionate about music--but nervous about transforming that passion into a useful classroom lesson--some resources, tools, and ideas to begin incorporating music into their teaching. It will focus on what is arguably the most difficult musical genre to teach with:…

This article offers a case study on the history of the tattoo in the United States and the rise of American imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. It models how high school history teachers can use the tattoo to teach about the rise of American imperialism. It also illustrates the author's primary argument: American imperialism fueled…

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…

When Lebanon gained its independence from France in 1943, it adopted a system that divided political power along clearly defined sectarian lines. The institutionalized sectarian nature of the country resulted in tensions that led to civil war in 1975. Lebanon quickly disintegrated into a number of irreconcilable cantons and seemed to be destined…

For many non-native people, Native Americans are one large homogenous group. A fairly simple "group" to understand. Indigenous people are commonly presented and understood through long-enduring imagery via movies, advertising, product naming, and mascots. Through these processes, indigenous peoples are labeled, named, and historically…

Due to the particular experiences of the African continent and its peoples, and the myriad of ways these experiences have been interpreted, appropriated, and reclaimed, there are a pressing series of epistemological, pedagogical, and ethical challenges, especially for those who wish to include African content in predominantly non-Africanist…

With the (re-)discovery and gradual transcription and translation of native-language primary sources in the twentieth century, a new branch of Mexican ethnohistory developed around Mesoamerican native-language research. This scholarship has profoundly reshaped the understanding of a history that for centuries had followed a Eurocentric paradigm.…

Why do people who claim the same epistemological beliefs interpret and express these beliefs in ways that seem diametrically opposed? And how can the author understand tensions in the classroom that arise from such divergent expressions of religious faith, especially in the context of history? There are a number of ways to examine these questions…

Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

This author is an avid consumer of history and has a desire to open students to the endless supply of the riveting stories of men and women struggling to cope with a changing world. The fascination toward the people of the past is enthralling history, and students need to feel that same sense of wonder and love of history. To accomplish this goal,…

University instructors preparing prospective sixth- to twelfth-grade history teachers often realize it can be difficult to condense the extensive information these individuals need for their future profession into one or two courses. Teacher preparation programs are forced to juggle requirements for program accreditation with their ethical…

Critical thinking is defined more by what it is not than what it is. It is not rote memorization of dates, facts, and events. Instead, it involves delving into the meaning of historical developments--interpreting, comparing, theorizing, and evaluating--often with the aid of primary sources and multiple secondary sources. Students learn to ask…

This paper seeks to explore the ways in which "lessons of history," in particular the "Munich analogy," have been misconstrued in justification of United States armed intervention since the beginning of the Cold War. While the wisdom of a hawkish foreign policy is indeed one lesson of Munich--certainly as applied to World War…

The simplest and most widely held definition of Social Darwinism is the application of concepts of biological evolution to social and moral development. More specifically, it is social evolution through "survival of the fittest" in a "struggle for existence" in which the strong prevail and the weak are defeated and disappear.…