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Structuring
the World History Survey: A First Timer Confesses
Mary Jane Maxwell
Washington State University |
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In May 2004 I received my Ph.D. in World History
from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. In August I began
teaching my first World History survey class. I was supposed to be an expert
in world history. According to my numerous application and recommendation
letters for world history positions, I was "specifically trained to teach"
the survey course. Yet as I sat down last summer to write the "World Civilization
to 1500" course syllabus, I felt as overwhelmed as nearly everybody else
in my position for the very first time. How would I teach all this material
in fifteen weeks?
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All historians are trained never to "cover" material
in the classroom just for the sake of coverage. For world historians, however,
this is an especially difficult challenge considering the breadth of material
-- thousands of years of global history -- we are typically expected to
convey to students during a semester. I began to structure the class with
several broadly conceived goals. First, I vowed not to overwhelm the students
in a deluge of unrelated facts. Rather, I hoped to aim for analytical depth
at the expense of feverish coverage. Had I not persuasively argued this
point in my comprehensive exams, citing veteran world historians such as
Michael Adas and Philip Curtin?1
So, armed with the knowledge of the virtue of comparative and thematic approaches
versus a litany of encyclopedic data, I set about constructing a single
overarching theme. This class would focus on religion, I decided, since
my own training in world history at WSU emphasized a concentration in a
particular theme (mine was religion) as well as a region. My research on
cross-cultural conversion in the pre-modern era worked well for most of
the globe, especially Eurasia -- now I just needed to incorporate the Americas,
Oceania, and most of Africa into the narrative. My grand scheme aimed to
present a coherent world history narrative grounded in a distinct yet comprehensive
theme from which students would consider all other topics such as trade,
art, music, politics, migration, environment, and war. My lecture topics,
readings, and assignments would all hinge on the theme of religion, yet
would inevitability incorporate other aspects of early societies. And the
best part of my idea, unlike so many others that I have conceived, is that
so far it's an astonishing success.
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Students like to discuss religion. I discovered
this right away in our first class discussion comparing Mesopotamian, Hebrew,
and Hindu creation stories. To my great surprise, many students never realized
that such similarities, the cataclysmic flood in this case, could exist
in several different religions. I use class discussions and comparisons
to illustrate the influence and extent of cross-cultural encounters. Discussion
in my class only occurs about once a week following lectures that introduce
new topics. I make sure that all my lectures are abundantly illustrated
with visuals on PowerPoint. Here at Washington State University I am, after
all, in an enormous auditorium with state-of-the art technology, a big screen,
and over one hundred restless freshmen! Moreover, I have traveled much of
the globe and I use my own photos to personalize my lectures in an attempt
to make history charismatic and accessible to students. For example, my
illustrations of the Egyptian environment (vast, empty desert in contrast
to the rich Nile River Valley) served to explain the origin of mummification,
worship of river gods, and the construction of colossal limestone monuments,
including the temple of Karnak in Luxor. I explain how the environment,
especially climate, has preserved the relics of many ancient cultures, yet
rapidly destroyed others in sub-tropical regions. Just like the children's
book Where's Waldo, my students are always on the lookout for my
daughter, Claire, who has been spotted in my slides climbing up Scythian
burial mounds in southern Russia and enjoying a meal with nomadic desert
Bedouins.
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I begin each lecture on the environment and geography
of early complex societies, and then work through the basic features of
each religion. I attempt to build each lecture on the previous one, always
asking questions such as, "the Chinese are not unique in venerating their
ancestors -- what other society practices this custom? Why is this important?"
Students recall ancestor worship in African religions and this generally
prompts a brief discussion. We also examine the relationship between religion
and political authority. Students compare the Shang rulers' use of ancestor
worship to sanction their leadership to the Mayan kings who relied on bloodletting
rituals. Later we might compare the Mandate of Heaven to the idea of Divine
Monarchy as we examine the heirs of Alexander the Great in the Hellenistic
and Roman empires. My lecture on the Pax Romana and the silk roads
features the spread of the religions previously introduced: Christianity,
mystery religions, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism. As merchants and
missionaries interacted and co-mingled, so did their religious beliefs.
For example, I ask students to explain: how did the silk roads encourage
the development of Manicheaism? I ask: how did the mystery religions influence
Christianity? And for everything that I leave out of the lecture, I expect
students to have read about it in their textbook. |
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Most world history textbooks to 1500 C.E. devote
a generous amount of time to religion. The textbook I use, Jerry Bentley
and Herbert Ziegler's Traditions and Encounters, Volume I to 1500,
3rd edition (McGraw-Hill), shapes the chronological framework of
the course. There are four sections in the textbook, and I administer four
corresponding exams. We begin with "The Early Complex Societies, 3,500 to
500 B.C.E." and focus on how religion shapes societies, and end with "An
Age of Cross Cultural Interaction 1000 to 1500 C.E." and concentrate on
the relationship between religion and war, conquest and conversion. In between
we focus on how religion influenced art, architecture, and music as well
as the relationship between religion and trade. Because I do not use a reader,
I make copious handouts that correspond to the text chapters in order to
stimulate in-class discussions. In my future classes, students will be able
to access and print the course supplemental readings in a link on a yet-to-come
course web page (this is my first year teaching!). I assign three
books besides the text: Siddhartha,
Alchemy of Happiness (medieval Islamic mysticism), and the short text from Julian
of Norwich's Revelation of Divine Love (medieval Christian mysticism). These readings
permit students to explore three religions in depth. Students are required
to write three short essays on the books to fulfill in part my second goal
in the course: constructing and defending a thesis. I distribute the essay
questions weeks in advance (see assignments), and using lecture notes and
the Bentley text for evidence my students write the essay in class.
This eliminates the problem of plagiarism when using such a popular book.
With Julian of Norwich, however, students turn in a take-home essay
that compares the similarities of mysticism in Indian thought, Islam, and
Christianity.
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Comparisons do not end with the fundamentals of
religious tenets. We also explore impact of religion on art, architecture
and music in part three of the text, "The Postclassical Era, 500-1000 C.E."
In this section, I make abundant use of my personal collection of Russian
icons and images of Eastern Orthodox churches throughout Russia, Turkey,
and eastern Europe. We compare the dome of Hagia Sopia in Istanbul to the
kaleidoscope of colorful onion domes atop St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
How did one influence the other? I examine this question in a lecture that
traces the political and cultural development of Kievan Rus' and its relationship
to Byzantium. As Buddhism came over the silk roads to China, new art and
architecture took shape as revealed in the cave temples of Dunhuang. While
the Buddhists depicted the lives of the Buddha and the boddhisatvas in
temple paintings, the Christians, in a similar fashion, depicted the lives
of the saints and the life of Christ on icons. At the same time, the Igbo
in Africa built mbari shrines depicting their gods. We compare these
images in class and discuss their formation and the impact of cross-cultural
encounters in their development. Orthodox Christians drew spiritual sustenance
from their religious icons, yet Muslims refrained from depicting images
in their mosques. Why? As we examine Christian and Islamic doctrine on this
subject (as well as its influence on Byzantine iconoclasm in the 8th
and 9th century) we explore Islamic art and architecture as it
expressed itself in arabesques, calligraphy, and geometric patterns. Another
lecture compares medieval Christian and Islamic music. I had the opportunity
to watch "whirling dervishes" perform in Istanbul and I show a film clip
of this extraordinary sufi dance and explain the spiritual underpinnings
of sufi music, poetry, and dance. A few good art and music history books,
some recordings from the library, and several hours on Google Images makes
for beautifully illustrated lectures that explore the relationship between
art, music, architecture and religion over time and space.
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Thus far my students have learned about the formation
and fundamentals of various world religions over time, they have demonstrated
a substantial degree of analytical depth and understanding through assignments
asking for comparisons among these religions, and the class in general has
maintained a unity and coherency through use of a common theme. But what
about everything we left out? I, too, fret unless the majority of the material
in the textbook is addressed. This concern is alleviated through my unusual
method of structuring exams. I experimented with the take-home exam that
attempted to "cover everything" in one very, very long essay. I tried
to "cram it all in" in a one-hour in-class exam composed of identifications,
short answers, and an essay to boot. Both methods yielded superficial results.
I now combine both techniques and by doing so I have eliminated the stress
of the "one hour write as fast as you can" exam as well as a long regurgitation
of the textbook in the "big question take-home essay." Instead, students
prepare a four page take-home essay on a narrow topic drawn from lecture
material. They use the text and the handouts as evidence to support their
thesis (see study guides). On the day it is due, they take an in-class exam
composed of a map quiz and answer three or four identifications (from a
choice of six) that are drawn from the thirty or so listed in their study
guide [Study
Guide I, Study
Guide II, Study
Guide III, and Take
Home Final]. The identifications are drawn from the textbook and include
the portions of the class that I failed to discuss. Voilà
-- depth and breadth.
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I will continue, naturally, to rewrite my lectures,
essays, and exam questions each semester. I will research topics and regions
that are still unfamiliar. But there is one thing that I do not anticipating
changing anytime soon and that is my original vision for the world history
survey class. My initial two goals, i.e. sticking to a common theme and
teaching students to construct and defend a thesis, prevented me from crushing
my students in an onslaught of unrelated facts from one part of the globe
on Monday to another region on Wednesday and to yet another on Friday. Moreover,
I am teaching my strength in the field of world history, rather than attempting
to learn it all in one year (generally known as the keeping one chapter
ahead of the class method.) I would like to think that students leave my
class with an understanding of patterns and processes in world history that
serve to link societies rather than isolate them. My thematic approach allows
students to perceive and understand historical topics as events that occur
on a global scale rather than as isolated circumstances. Sufis, yogis, saints,
shamans, priests, and diviners are important conduits that connected societies
across time and place. And as we dissect each religion's distinctness, we
tend to discover and emphasize their common practices and beliefs. It is
my hope, ultimately, that my perspective on teaching the world history survey
through the lens of a single theme will foster in my students a sense of
shared humanity. This powerful concept is what attracted me to world history
years ago, and I hope never to forget its compelling appeal.
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Biographical Note: Mary Jane Maxwell received her Ph.D. in World History
at Washington State University, Pullman, WA in 2004. She is currently
teaching for the General Education and History departments at WSU. |
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