Interactive Teaching Resources: History and Social Sciences

Africa in World Perspective
American History to 1877
Ancient African History
Art History and Appreciation
The Center for History and New Media
The Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory
Civil War to the Present
An Electronic Blackboard
The Empire of Nature
Environmental History of the Americas
Environmental History of the United States
History Courses at the University of Virgina
The History of Private Life
History 380: People and Production in South Africa
Hypermedia and History at UCLA
Modern Japan
Premodern China
RiverWEB: A Knowledge Network
Syllabi Showcase
The University of Illinois Text Project (Text96)
U of Wisconsin Student History Network
The Valley of the Shadow Project
The World History Center at Northeastern Univ.

Africa in World Perspective: This course is an introduction to Africa. While our attention and work is centered on the continent of Africa, at every major step we will be moving outward to the larger African world and Europe/North America--hence the title "Africa in World Perspective".
American History to 1877: This course offers an interpretive overview of American history from the European invasion of North America, beginning in the late fifteenth century, through the American Civil War and Reconstruction in the mid-nineteenth century. We focus on the changing aspirations and behavior of ordinary Americans, as well as on the transformative achievements of the powerful and famous.
Ancient African History: This course is designed as an introduction to the history of Ancient Africa. It begins with the origins of humankind in prehistoric Africa and ends with the Age of European expansionism, approximately the 16th century. It would be impossible to cover a continent as vast as Africa during one semester. Therefore I have chosen several regions and states as the focus for the course. The exclusion of other areas/states does not imply their insignificance but is usually related to the type of materials available for undergraduate reading.
Art History and Appreciation:In this course you will investigate a representative sampling of the art of the world. This statement means that you will spend time looking at pictures of objects that are widely recognized and accepted as works of art by art professionals. Some selections may challenge your current definition of art. This challenge is to be expected. People, including art scholars, have argued the definition of art for thousands of years! Why shouldn't you ask some of the same questions?
The Center for History and New Media: A collaborative effort between the George Mason University History Department and the American Social History Project, this Center features a comprehensive list of teaching resources including, The New Media Classroom, Online Syllabi and Courses, The Composition in Cyberspace Project, and a link to Social Studies Resources for Teachers maintained by Robert J Konczal, under the direction of Dr. Fred Risinger at the Indiana University School of Education.
The Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory: The exhibition was created entirely from materials in the Chicago Historical Society's Collections including documents, newspapers, books, paintings, photographs, and three dimensional artifacts. With the assistance of the Office of Instructional Technology at Northwestern and with the expert guidance of Professor Carl Smith, author of a very important book on the Fire, the Historical Society was able to create an online resource unlike any other. The Chicago Historical Society is also an H-Net Regional Center.
Civil War to the Present: History 102, American History: Civil War to the Present, taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Professor Stanley K. Schultz, is survey course in American history. Lecture topics will be focused on (I) The reconstruction of American Society, 1865-1917, (II) The reordering of American society, 1880's-1970's, and (III) The thousand days of knights: The Kennedy years.
An Electronic Blackboard: Using Multimedia to Teach a College Level US History Course: This article by Professor John F. Reynolds of the University of Texas at San Antonio was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in January 1997. Links to Professor Reynold's class syllabus and related resources can also be located on this site. The University of Texas at San Antonio is also an H-Net Regional Center.
The Empire of Nature...(A graduate Seminar, UC-Santa Cruz): An interdisciplinary graduate seminar directed at students from the natural and social sciences and history, who work on environmental topics. It is concerned with exploring the utility of historical analysis for understanding contemporary human-ecological problems.
Environmental History of the Americas (U of Dayton): This course compares and contrasts the histories of conservationism and environmentalism in the United States, Canada and Latin America. It will also examine the histories of certain transboundary issues such as water rights and acid rain. The course aims at developing a sense of the gradual globalization of concerns for and actions about the environment.
Environmental History of the US(U of Wisconsin-Madison): This course concerns itself with relationships between social change and ecology in what is now the United States. The basic premise is that the "natural" environment is an active participant in human affairs, not a passive object to be developed, contemplated, or "preserved". One need not be a committed environmentalist to find this course worthwhile; the focus here will be on non-human nature as a particular, important but little-understood aspect of human experience rather than on environmentalism per se. The course treats ecology, social change, and people's changing views of their place in nature as an interactive whole so as to provide different perspectives on what we are as people, both in relation to the non-human world and to each other. A major goal of the course, however, is to enhance students' ability to understand and to make their own decisions on current environmental issues.
History 380: People and Production in South Africa: This course explores the history of interactions between humans and the environment in South Africa, focusing particularly on food production. [The historical treatment of industrial production including mining, has little consideration of environmental issues, and we will consider these important issues only in our discussion of contemporary conditions.]
History Courses at the University of Virginia: The University of Virginia History department, located at (http://www.virginia.edu/~history/home.html) also features a number of online course initiatives. Of particular note are HIUS 323, "Nineteenth Century South" taught by Prof. Ed Ayers, HIUS 316, "Viewing America" taught by Prof. Brian Balogh, and HIUS 324, "The American South in the Twentieth Century" taught by Scot A. French. The University of Virginia is also an H-Net Regional Center.
The History of Private Life: Created by Professor Steven Mintz, this on-line course at the University of Houston includes extensive "screen shows" and on-line resources as well as a class listserv. The University of Houston is also an H-Net Regional Center.
Hypermedia and History at UCLA: Developed by Professor Jan Reiff, this course explores hypermedia theory and its application to the presentation of historical information. Offered in winter 1996 to five UCLA undergraduates, eight UCLA graduate students, and auditors from California State University at Fullerton and local historical hypermedia projects, this syllabus was also used at universities in Michigan and Illinois. UCLA is also an H-Net Regional Center.
Modern Japan: The course will cover Japanese history from 1600 to the present. Topics to be discussed include the Tokugawa shogunate, the Meiji Restoration, the rise of imperialism, the creation of an empire, WWII, the dropping of the atom bomb and the post-war recovery of Japan.
Premodern China: The course will provide a general survey of Chinese history from the Shang Dynasty (1766-1027 B.C.) to the Manchu conquest of 1644 A.D. Besides highlighting the major developments of each dynasty, the course will devote special attention to the Confucian and Legalist underpinings of the Chinese empire, the influence of Buddhism on Chinese society, the emergence of gentry culture and the civil service examination system, and the phenomenon of "barbarian" conquest.
RiverWEB: A knowledge Network for the Mississippi River Basin: During 1996 and 1997, an alliance of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Geographical Modeling Systems Laboratory and History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois State Museum and several other prospective partners, worked locally, regionally and nationally with numerous organizations in education, business and government to develop a multifaceted education and outreach program called RiverWeb. Based on both the WWW and CD-ROM, this project involves a number of components, including the "Living WebTM," a multifaceted program of training, education and outreach projects centered on the Web and targeted at schools, colleges, libraries and their communities. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is also an H-Net Regional Center.
Syllabi Showcase: I've got one main goal with this class, and that's to have fun. That's not to say that I don't think we'll be covering some really, really important and weighty issues, of course. But the first priority is to have some fun in doing it. The difficult thing for me was actually whittling this class down to one semester's worth of material. Also, it was hard to choose which books to order: there's so many good ones to choose from. There's a big book list for this course, but I feel very certain that most or all of the students in the class will be happy with most or all of these books: they are all very readable, interesting works.
The University of Illinois Text Project (Text96): UI-TEXT96 has scanned and converted to simple HTML text 30,000 pages of historical documents--primary sources. This textbase will be used for supplementary reading and termpaper assignments in the freshman and sophomore history survey courses in US History and Western Civilization at UIC and UIUC. The textbase will be stored on the World Wide Web and become a permanent asset for teachers and students.
The University of Wisconsin Student History Network: During the summer of 1996 fifteen UW System historians began to craft the following Web pages and email lists for their students in U.S. history and World history courses. Participating historians-turned-webmeisters came from a dozen campuses across the state. The goal of this project is to foster an exciting learning process via cyberspace that supplements current classroom activities--that is, to create an innovative, active form of distance learning. Each of the menu choices on their webpage is designed to take students through a self-paced learning project as well as to help stimulate discussion on our statewide, student-centered email listservs. The University of Wisconsin at Eau-Claire is also an H-Net Regional Center.
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War: This well known project has been pioneered the field of multimedia resources. A course on "Digital History and the American Civil War" which relates to this resource is also planned for the near future. Students in this four-hour course, aided by the Teaching with Technology Initiative, will integrate social, military, and political history with techniques of scanning, image manipulation, and web authoring. Using official records, newspapers, censuses, pensions, diaries, letters, and other sources from the Civil War era, student will create both web sites and historical narratives related to the two communities featured in the Valley of the Shadow Project, a web and CD effort based at the University of Virginia. The UVa is also an H-Net Regional Center.
The World History Center at Northeastern University: The mission of the World History Center is to create a nexus of sustained and collaborative work on research and curriculum in world history, in order to coordinate and consolidate work in this new, growing and important area of historical scholarship and teaching. The objectives of the World History Center fall into three areas: (1) to conduct research in world history, (2) to develop teaching materials for world history at secondary, undergraduate and graduate levels based on recent research and conceptualization, and (3) to develop institutional structures facilitating the study of world history. The World History Center at Northeastern University is also an H-Net Regional Center. Included in this site are collections of bibliographies, text reviews, reviews of books and media, lesson plans and links to related internet sites as well as information about, and exerpts from, CD-ROMs such as the IMMIGRANT project.