This article explores the connection between American exceptionalism and empire denialism by examining high-school World History textbooks approved for use in the state of Texas from the 1920s to 2016. Scholarship suggests that the powerful ideology of American exceptionalism is deeply uneasy about the role of the United States as an imperial…

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 author argues that, in the early 1920s, many urban White Americans saw in the Arctic an escape from a world of rapidly expanding technology and became captivated by images of Inuit communities. To pass down an antimodernist form of imperialism to children of the period, educators used lead ethnographic "Escimo" figurines, which…

"Capital of Mind" is the second volume in a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Picking up from the first volume, "Exchange of Ideas," Adam R. Nelson looks at the early decades of the nineteenth century, explaining how the idea of the modern university arose from a set of institutional…

Amid declining enrollment in humanities programs throughout the United States, the English major has been hit the hardest. This article gives voice to current English majors about why they choose to enroll in a program that often receives criticism pertaining to its value and worth. This study provides a literature review of the history of higher…

A deeper understanding of how slavery and colonialism fundamentally shaped the system of higher education in the United States has led colleges and universities to reexamine their histories and acknowledge harms committed and the need for repair. Campuses are experimenting with how to address racial justice and healing for faculty, staff, and…

This study explores how a Black oral history project can be used in a secondary social studies classroom as a culturally sustaining practice. This study uses case study methodology to answer the research question, how are Black oral histories a form of culturally sustaining practice in secondary social studies classrooms? This dissertation…

The power of democracy is its adaptability to a changing world. We can envision and work toward a society that is more just than the present. History education is more relevant now than ever. We offer ideas and strategies that can transform the history classroom into a space for understanding the past with the explicit purpose of learning from the…

This qualitative case study sought to analyze and describe both the quantity and quality of African American history curriculum integration into Virginia's U.S. History curriculum standards at three points in time (2008 standards, 2015 standards, and revised 2020 standards) in the three U.S. history courses (USI, 5th; USII, 6th; VUS; 11th).…

The disappointing results of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Civics and U.S. History have further fueled the call for consistent, high-quality social studies instruction. The response by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) highlighted the imperative for early grades, claiming "the lack of a solid…

This dissertation surveys the development of the Hawaiian higher educational system in the 19th century Hawaiian Kingdom as a strategy of Hawaiian leadership in promoting and protecting Hawaiian independence. This analysis revisits a Hawaiian educational history canon that overwhelmingly credits missionaries and foreigners as imposing an…

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University (KSU), killing four and wounding nine. Although this event marked a watershed moment in American culture and the start of a decline in activism related to the war in Vietnam, its place in higher education history is not well-understood. This paper traces the…

This article examines the relationship between Black social movements in Brazil and the United States through over a century of formations of struggle. Drawing from a review of Black periodicals in three time periods ranging from twentieth-century print press to contemporary digital social media, this article affirms the significance of the…

"Exchange of Ideas" launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations.…

Contextualization involves weaving together an interpretation of a document that situates it within its historical context. This study explores how undergraduate students approached the complex cognitive task of contextualizing historical documents. As part of their professional preparation to teach secondary social studies, undergraduate teacher…