Teaching about slavery entails teaching about the archive. Punctuated with silences, scattered with compelling details, and laden with descriptions that oscillate between racist, harrowing, and heartbreaking, runaway ads provide a glimpse into the lives of enslaved people. The details embedded within them--or omitted from them--can also provide…

We have studied how eliciting historical empathy in a class of 13th grade students through using the film "12 Years a Slave" (McQueen, 2013) supported their in-depth understanding of slavery in nineteenth-century USA. Historical empathy is one of the core elements of the new curricular reform implemented from 2020 in Norway, and it is…

The more than 200 years of chattel slavery in Canada is an example of the country's occluded history predicated on structural racism. This study of preservice elementary teachers in a social studies methods course helps to reveal how the history of Black enslavement in Canada has been effectively erased from the national consciousness. Using a…

The Dutch perpetrated in both the Holocaust and chattel slavery. However, Dutch cultural memory does not significantly recognize Dutch perpetration in these sensitive histories. This article explores the interplay between cultural memory and history education as a potential explanation for this oversight, by specifically focusing on the…

This paper analyzes "production stories," a genre of information literature and media responsible for teaching children how everyday things are made. As nineteenth-century families increasingly consumed tropical commodities produced by slave labor, including sugar, tea, coffee, rum, and tobacco, the production story developed in Britain…

Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing…

On a fall Thursday afternoon, the author sat with students, who were preservice social studies teachers, and discussed approaches to teaching slavery to high school students. As the discussion continued, the author began to ask about their experiences learning about the institution of chattel slavery in the United States South. During this…

As Americans contend with the question of which statues and markers belong (or don't) on public land, government leaders, civic groups, and citizens must be prepared to engage these conversations and answer a range of related questions. In this article, the authors view arguments over public statues--statues of persons that reside on public…

If high school history courses are meant to introduce students to the paradoxes and debates of American history, then they should study the 1619 Project, the authors argue in this article. College history students regularly debate the extent to which slavery was formative to the development of American systems of law, business, medicine, religion…

The 1619 Project by "The New York Times" asks American History teachers to revise their history curriculum to recognize the influence of Blackness, and of slavery, as foundational to the development of the United States. In this article I share a practical approach, including lesson plans and learning activities, to a similar revision of…

Despite limitations and challenges, teaching about difficult histories is an essential aspect of social studies courses and units across grade levels. This practical resource highlights stories of K-12 practitioners who have critically examined and reflected on their experiences with planning and teaching histories identified as difficult.…

Josh Garry describes his effort to refresh his approach to teaching the British transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on reading, lectures and discussions during an Historical Association Teacher Fellowship programme, Garry built a sequence of lessons designed to contextualise the trade while showing African agency and complexity. The result was a…

A current topic in U.S. public schools is teaching issues of racial discrimination in American history. There are those motivated by political gain for elected office that are trying to shut down conversations about slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws in K-12 schools while others point out the central role that race has played in U.S. history…

An inquiry framed around the experience of an enslaved woman, highlighted in a recent film, offers an opportunity for meaningful student engagement with the history of American enslavement.

The United States and Brazil were the two largest slave societies in the history of New World slavery, and the legacies of that history remain salient in both nations. Slavery and the slave trade are important topics to be taught in history courses, and future generations need to be given accurate information about the history and legacies of…