Expansion and Engagement: Creating Places for World Historians in Teaching American History Grants

This presentation asks how Teaching American History grants can support and enhance efforts to address transnational themes in United States history within the scope of the grant guidelines, the structure of workshops, and the themes of funded projects. Drawing on five years of experience as a university historian involved in multiple Teaching American History grants in Southwest Virginia, this presentation will describe how a commitment to global perspectives enhances professional development, deepens content knowledge, and broadens instructional perspectives. Recognizing that history teachers at all levels are under pressure to teach a standards curriculum, world historians can be recruited to lead workshops on transnational or global topics, such as the Atlantic slave trade, the age of revolutions, the Monroe doctrine, the origins of United States imperialism, involvement in two world wars and a cold war, and the new contingencies of an age of globalization, each of which are incorporated into the United States history  “Standards of Learning” for Virginia. By matching these topics with the professional and scholarly interests of university faculty, these projects have invited participation from world historians, thus fulfilling teachers’ desire for broadened perspectives and encouraging historians’ engagement with history teaching across the K-16 continuum. This presentation also responds to concerns that Teaching American History grant program may come at the expense of teaching world history, as the resources, attention, and development that follow a major external grant confirm existing preferences for American history in the elementary and secondary curriculum. Given the documented challenges facing world history teachers in terms of prior training, professional development, and curricular requirements and given the imperative of transcending national boundaries of knowledge in this era of globalizations, this presentation argues for expansions and engagements that improve the teaching all kinds of history in America’s schools.