At this roundtable, historians from four liberal arts colleges will discuss how their teaching approaches the history of countries, cultures, and societies outside the United States. What are the advantages of a national or regional survey course, as opposed to a thematic class or a transnational or global approach to history? How can history departments attract undergraduates to the study of locales they may not know much about? What are the best ways to incorporate a wide variety of different racial and national groups into the study of international and global history? How can historians of Europe combat the impression among some students that their European history is a subject for white people, and how does the teaching of diverse global societies change when our student bodies become more international in character? The discussion in this session will be wide-ranging but will touch on questions like these.

This roundtable is part of a three-part series on the future of history at small liberal arts colleges. In recent years, liberal arts college history departments have faced many of the same challenges and opportunities as departments at other types of institution, but the experiences of faculty and students at SLACs are in many ways distinct; liberal arts college history departments have also been the site of exciting experiments in curriculum and pedagogy likely to interest the larger field of history. This series is intended to give SLAC history faculty a place to discuss issues of common concern, to build a greater sense of community, and to highlight the exciting things taking place in their departments, while entering into dialogue with each other (and the rest of the field) about the future of the historical profession.

Although faculty at small liberal arts colleges are the primary audience for this roundtable, anyone is welcome to come, including prospective SLAC faculty and other historians interested in learning about the future of history at liberal arts colleges.