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This issue
features a Forum and overall focus on Latin America in world history. As Forum
guest editor Rick Warner points out it is not only a shame, but a grave
failing of the field, that Latin American history, which has played a major role in the evolution of world history (from the Columbian Exchange to
Plantation and World Systems), is so often slighted or under represented in world
history texts, survey courses, and lesson plans. The essays gathered by Warner
are proof of the need to redress this situation, as are several related featured
articles and reviews, including a review essay by Scott Eastman. If there are
any doubts as to whether sufficient instructional resources exist to address
this issue in the classroom, it is hoped that the digital resources guide included
in the Forum will help dispel them.
Other featured
articles and reviews insure that, as is the nature of this journal, there is
ample world history content and pedagogy reaching beyond the subject of the
Forum that will be useful for research and at all levels of instruction. These
include an active learning strategy developed by Jeremy Greene and an intimate
method devised by David Hertzel to address one of the most pressing issues of
this day and also past eras of history, the migrant/ancestral identity
experience. Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox investigates Vietnamese historians views of their
American War (1961–1975), which had so great an impact on the course of their
own and global history. In so doing, he illuminates ways both researchers and students
of Vietnam and the wider world can explore the evolution of national histories
and national identities.
Among the
featured articles is an essay by a young American scholar, Gleb Tsipursky,
which, in its conception alone, will warm the hearts of all those committed to
the field of World history. Since the founding of the World History
Association and this journal many years ago, world historians have been engaged
in an effort to assist non-World historians, principally historians of Europe
and Western Civilization, in the teaching of world history, a task for which
most Western specialists have little training, but who have been asked in
ever-increasing numbers to teach world history survey courses as part of
globalizing/internationalizing curriculum initiatives world-wide. By seeking
to assist world historians, many of whom are not well-grounded in European
history, to improve the delivery of the Western historical record and
traditions, Tsipursky heralds the maturation of the field of world history. In
the classroom at least, world history is no longer the stepchild of historical
studies. Classrooms are increasingly managed by generation of instructors
whose own education has been shaped by more expansive world views and a greater
awareness of world historical process than that of their predecessors. As
Tsipursky reminds us, Western and World History are not competing fields, but
complimentary; a proposition to which World
History Connected has and remains deeply committed.
Marc Jason Gilbert is
Professor of History and National Endowment for the Humanities Endowed Chair in
World History at Hawai'i Pacific University. He can be reached at mgilbert@hpu.edu. |
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