Globalizing and Its Discontents: Ideological Resistance, Institutional Inertia, and the United States History Curriculum

The path between scholarship and teaching has been dramatically different for American and world history. Public and professional demand for a globally encompassing world history survey course preceded most of the scholarly works that provided its themes. By contrast, scholars have been “internationalizing” U.S. history for more than two decades without substantially changing the U.S. survey or department curricula. Public “ownership” of American history and conflicts over its civic agenda provide one explanation for the difference: scholars may have declared American exceptionalism dead but it is alive and well among students, school boards, and influential political conservatives, many of whom interpret internationalization as a campaign to undermine patriotism, demote the United States to “just another nation,” or promote “one-worldism.”  Institutional inertia in multiple forms, from provincial state history standards and compartmentalized curricula to career coasting in the U.S. survey, also blocks the globalizing trajectory.  To these obstacles have been added legitimate pedagogical qualms and practical challenges that question the “why” and “how” of the internationalizing project. In the face of these challenges, and in concert with several complementary forces, there are nevertheless indications that a beneficial enlargement of the U.S. history curriculum is proceeding, albeit at a slower pace and in somewhat different forms than advocates like myself originally anticipated.