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In an
effort to change how textbook material is delivered to students, Wadsworth
Cengage has become quite imaginative. This creativity is not limited to
linkages between text and electronic materials, although that is certainly
true, but extends to the format of the material presented. For Voyages in
World History the traveler theme suggested in the title is carried throughout
as an integral part of Valerie Hansen's and Kenneth Curtis's chronologically and
regionally organized work. Voyages begins with prehistory and works
through to the present. Each chapter, thirty-two in all, incorporates the life
of a "traveler," a sort of narrator for the forthcoming chapter, which
coincides with the given chapter's thematic examination of the era. The world
history textbook is intended for freshman survey courses or advanced high
school classes. Each traveler represents someone from the era and region
covered, and reflects a life affected by the chapter's themes. After an introductory
passage, offering a glimpse into the traveler's life, that personage's life is woven
into the remaining chapter's text. The chapters chronology overlap, for
example, chapter two traces the creation of complex societies from 4000 to 550
B.C.E. and chapter three examines the rise of Indian civilization and Buddhism between
2600 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. While this may at first be disconcerting to students,
such overlap helps to explore the complexity of historical change as well as
basic assumptions about periodization.
Travelers
in Voyages in World History include cameos by historical persons
familiar and not. Some unnamed travelers, like a Buddhist monk and an Abbasid
singing girl, offer the opportunity to speculate on the lives of common people
who rarely left behind detailed accounts of their lives. Conversely, Kennewick
Man, Ashoka and his wife, and Nelson Mandala, are likely to be more familiar to
students and thus more comforting. In fact, Kennewick Man is an interesting
example of how the traveler is interwoven into the narrative. The passage is
not from Kennewick Man's perspective, but rather from the perspective of James
C. Chatters, the forensic anthropologist who first examined the remains of
Kennewick Man in 1996. In "The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.," the
first chapter, this particular vantage point sets the stage for the rest of the
text. Kennewick Man is not without controversy, particularly, as Chatters'
notes, because it called into question all the racial assumptions
anthropologists had about Paleo-Indians. Chatters observed that the
skeleton's features suggest closer links to Polynesian ancestry than to extant
native populations in North America. Kennewick Man's ancestry was disputed in
the U.S. courts for nearly a decade as scientists, governmental officials, and
tribal groups vied to claim the remains. Because of the completeness and age of
the skeleton (ca. 7300 B.C.E.) it has become a focal point of much discussion
about how exactly humans came to North America, throwing into question previous
assumptions about crossing the northern land bridge. As a way of problematizing
history, then, Hansen and Curtis offer the travelers as windows for
understanding their own localities, their own timeframes, and the broader world
historical context.
On
first glance Hansen's and Curtis's work appears to have similar faults as other
world history texts, focusing too much on the western narrative, but on closer
inspection this assumption falls flat. While Herodotus does rank among the
travelers, at least nine women do as well, and a large number of the travelers
come from outside the traditional "western civilization" narrative. What is
more, while the western narrative does make a distinct show in the text, so
does North America. In general, world historical narratives are often faulted
for excluding North American history. Yet Hansen and Curtis' treatment of
Pauline John-Tekahionwake is a testament to their inclusivity and care in
selecting travelers for their text. Here they weave together the global
narratives within the voice of a late nineteenth century Canadian woman of
mixed English and Mowhawk heritage, and also a poet and performer who used her
skill to celebrate First Nations heritage as well as the rights of all peoples,
including women. Tekahionwake's storyline appears in "State Building and Social
Change in the Americas, 1830-1895," alongside U.S. sectionalism, Jackson's
Indian removal policies, and Mexican independence.
Voyages
in World History does not offer anything terribly new in terms of its use
of color, maps and pictures, chapter questions, or key terms, but it does offer
a novel way of personalizing the enormous task of personalizing the task of
teaching world history. Instead of presenting a purely omniscient narrative at
the macro-level, Hansen and Curtis navigate various scales of historical
inquiry, from the personal, to the local, to the regional, and finally to the
global, in an effective manner suitable for the undergraduate and high school
classroom alike. This strength of Voyages in World History, particularly
the integrative quality of the text, is also ideal for addressing the thematic
approach the AP World History curriculum works toward.
Maryanne Rhett, Assistant Professor of World and Middle Eastern History at
Monmouth University, is currently preparing her manuscript for publication (the
world history of the Balfour Declaration) and continues to work on the
intersection of sequential art (comic books/graphic novels) and world history.
You may contact her at mrhett@monmouth.edu |
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