World History at Center Stage: What’s Next for a Fast-Growing Field

World History is today one of the fastest growing fields in the profession, as evidenced by the meteoric rise in the numbers of AP exams, textbooks published, and relative numbers of academic jobs which emphasize world history as a strength.  This emphasis is consistent with the bottom-to-top development of the field, and its base in lower-division surveys in community colleges and four-year institutions.  Therefore it is particular noteworthy that the field has been embraced by students identifying with historically-underserved populations, who can perhaps better understand themselves and relate their families’ experiences to those of the global historical actors presented in world history curriculum.  At the same time, the field is often challenged by the privileging of global forces over people, leaving behind life-stories and the narratives of individuals in the wake of more abstract historical processes of global flows and exchange.  As professors train their graduate students for the task of teaching world history, there should be caution in maintaining the relevance of the world-history survey for the students that we are trying to reach.