As a historian, I’m thinking a lot lately about when the “era of 2020” will begin and end within the US survey. In addition to the presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic (social, political, and economic factors) will be center stage for any discussion of the historical events of 2020. In US history classes there will undoubtedly be coverage of the efforts of Black Lives Matter and other civil rights organizations to draw attention to systemic racism after a series of high-profile murders of African Americans during the year.   With this week’s conviction of Derek Chauvin in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, I’m cautiously hopeful that historians of the future will be able to offer students 2021 as a pivot in the American narrative. Perhaps at some point in the future, this week’s verdict in Minnesota will be a marker. Those of us who teach US history have no shortage of examples of times in our national past when the government or the courts have been on the wrong side of history. On April 20, 2021, however, we as a nation watched as a jury of our peers unanimously voted to convict a man of brutal crimes, and for many of our students there is hope in that jury’s decision.   Future historians will be looking at the period in which we currently live for evidence of how the nation responded to the verdict. This moment offers us a unique opportunity to reflect upon the events of the last thirteen months while encouraging students to be part of the historical record. Ask your students to write a letter or journal entry responding to the Chauvin conviction. Guide their writing with some historically relevant questions:   Identify yourself; categories such as age, gender, race, and level of education will be helpful to historians reading your writing in years to come. When do you recall first learning about the death of George Floyd? What media sources did you rely upon for information? Did you feel confident that you could trust these sources? Why/why not? Did you attend any events related to social justice issues during 2020? If so, where/when? Did you follow the public debate about police reform? Did you see any specific changes take place in your community related to the subject? Did your friends/family discuss/follow the case? How would you characterize the conversations about race and policing that took place around you? How did you/your community respond to the verdict?  Finally, ask your students to think about bias. Did the knowledge that future generations might read their reflections of the Chauvin conviction influence what they wrote? How?   Assigning this responsive writing as an extra-credit or low-stakes assignment provides students the opportunity to be reflective while also documenting perspectives in this historic time. Brainstorm with the students how best to preserve their writings. As someone who loves archival research, I would be partial to donating paper copies of the students’ work to archive at my college. Students who feel less inclined to share their views, however, might embrace the idea of sealing their essay in an envelope and stashing it away somewhere for safe keeping. Even those who chose not to share their work as part of an archive donation will no doubt be interested in revisiting their 2021-perspective later in life.   ... View more

Often lauded for her performance as an actress and as the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, Anna May Wong, born in 1903 in Chinatown, Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese American parents. At a young age, she always wanted to be an actress and at the age of 17, she landed the lead role in the first film in technicolor: The Toll of the Sea¹.  Despite all of the luster and praise for her performance, she was still ridiculed for her looks and struggled to find roles that weren't harmful or stereotypical². She wasn't always successful--she had taken on roles that portrayed Asian women in a negative light: often portrayed as "passive young women" or "Dragon Ladies--murderous villainess"² . Unfortunately, these  damaging caricatures and stereotypes  proliferated well into my own childhood: the Fu Manchu villain with the curly long mustache wearing a queue hairstyle; a dragon lady, an Asian woman who is dangerous, alluring, and conniving; and of course the one that props up over and over again: that we all know martial arts.  I was inspired to write this blog and chose today’s topic about Asian representation in the media after Chloe Zhao made headlines for being the first Asian woman ever to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for her film, Nomadland. This is a big win for Asian Americans and I am sure that Anna May Wong would be ecstatic to see how far we have come as a society--to see people like her be able to win such a prestigious award is a sign that times are changing for the better. But, I believe that there is still a lot of work to do. While I am overjoyed about her win, I have a few lingering questions: Why did it take this  long for an Asian woman director to win this award despite there being 77 other Golden Globe Awards prior to this? Not only that, why is Minari, a film about a Korean family in America, considered a foreign language film? Yes, according to the rules, a film with at least 51% foreign language is placed in this category³. But Minari is an American story: in essence, it represents the immigrant family experience and the truth that many kids who moved to this country didn't grow up speaking English, they spoke their parent's native tongue. This doesn't make them any less American and in precluding them from the Best Motion Picture - Drama category, it raises a sentiment that I and many others have known all too well: that we aren't Americans, we will always be associated with Otherness. Creating such a rigid arbitrary rule where substance comes second speaks volumes on how unfair this system is.   And while there won't be any Fu Manchu, Dragon Lady-type characters any time soon (hopefully), I feel like we are replacing old outdated stereotypes with a more polished, newer, "positive" stereotype: that all Asians are wealthy and live a life of luxury and excess. With shows and movies like Crazy Rich Asians, House of Ho, and Netflix's new reality tv show Bling Empire, it indulges people in the successes Asians have had while continuing to gloss over a truth that many people don't know about or have swept under: that Asian Americans continue to have the largest income disparities between the lowest paid earners and the highest paid earners than any other group⁴. While this is definitely a turning point in Hollywood media, I think there needs to be more grounded characters that highlight the nuances on what it means to be Asian in America. Sources 1. Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Anna May Wong.” National Women's History Museum. Accessed April 20, 2021. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/anna-may-wong. 2.New York Historical Society. “Anna May Wong (1905-1961).” Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, New York Historical Society, 29 Oct. 2014, chineseamerican.nyhistory.org/anna-may-wong-1905-1961/.  3. Golden Globes. "Entry form: Foreign films." (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.goldenglobes.com/entry-form-foreign-films 4. Kochhar, Rakesh, and Anthony Cilluffo. “Income Inequality in the U.S. Is Rising Most Rapidly Among Asians.” Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project. Pew Research Center, August 21, 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/07/12/income-inequality-in-the-u-s-is-rising-most-rapidly-among-asians/.   ... View more

Crisis in Context: Teaching American History Virtually From Past To Present Americans are presently enduring at least five overlapping crises: political representation; racial justice; public health; economic crisis due to the pandemic; and the climate crisis. American history scholars and Macmillan authors Rebecca Edwards, Eric Hinderaker, and Robert Self explore American crises throughout our nation's history, raising questions like: What have other moments of political, economic, and epidemiological crisis looked like? How did we get here? Utilizing historical context to make sense of these "unprecedented times," our panelists discuss these questions and pedagogical techniques to help students learn remotely. Watch the full webinar here. ... View more

I was asked at least twice during the month of March to explain “the point” of studying women’s history. How, the first well-meaning person questioned, does taking a class that examines US history from the lens of women’s lives differ from taking general US history? In the second conversation a student questioned why I believe that US Women’s History is an important course for Economics majors to take: “If it’s so important, why doesn’t my Economics program require it?”   My pet peeve about the “months” approach to celebrating history (February = Black History, March = Women, etc) is that for a few short weeks topics that I view as important in every history class suddenly take center stage. But when the month ends, more often than not, the traditional narrative resumes.    I’ve written before in this space about the necessity of diversifying the US survey. As much as we see amazing work being done by historians on an array of diverse topics, students still regularly share with me that in their US history classes they meet African Americans in the larger narrative in only two places: during the Civil War and the post-World War II civil rights movement. Women appear amidst a discussion of the 19th amendment and “flappers,” only to disappear and then return to the narrative as goddesses of white domesticity in the 1950s. In 2021 we have to do better.    This week, then, I’d like to draw our Macmillan Community members’ attention to the New York Historical Society’s work-in-progress web site that shares an open access women’s history curriculum that can help even the most novice historian to incorporate women into their classroom narrative. Women & the American Story (WAMS) presents material in units that include images, suggested lecture and discussion topics, and lists of key themes and questions, in addition to background materials.    Historian Allyson Schettino describes the WAMS curriculum this month in an article titled “Where are the Women: Promoting Inclusions in Survey History Courses” in The American Historian, a publication of the Organization of American Historians. Schettino writes, “Through WAMS, we seek to make the history taught in our classrooms more representative, accurate, and engaging. When more students see themselves reflected in the social studies curriculum, they recognize their own agency. When students see a broader range of experiences represented in the narrative of the American past, they learn to value diversity and appreciate difference. Both strengthen our democracy.” I’m excited to see the New York Historical Society's work in women's history continue and to incorporate some of their open-access materials into my fall courses.   As we prepare for the 2021-22 academic year I would love to share more projects like WAMS that are offering free resources to academics with the goal of increasing diversity. If you are working on a web site or other similar project that you would like to share, please contact me and let’s spread the word!  ... View more

We're thrilled to see Macmillan Learning's Freedom On My Mind author Mia Bay's anticipated Traveling Black book make its New York Times debut in the Books of the Times section and in the Boston Globe. "...the question of literal movement becomes a way to understand the civil rights movement ..." Click the links above to learn about Bay's analysis of the history of mobility & resistance during the Civil Rights era.  ... View more

Click here to read the review: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/books/review-traveling-black-mia-bay.html ... View more

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that as millions of people across the United States were being vaccinated against COVID-19 last week, jury selection was concluding in the criminal case against Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd in May 2020. Two of the most significant news stories of 2020 continue to captivate the public's attention in 2021.   No doubt in years to come history textbooks will chronicle the events of 2020 as reflections of each other: the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis; the horrific deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd; the historic election that put into office the first female vice president. Future historians will be asked to measure the impact of each of these touchstones in our national history as these events will forever be connected in the historical narrative and the public’s collective memory.    This week, therefore, I’m asking my students to identify aspects of American life that they believe have permanently changed as a result of these national and international events. I’ve created an optional discussion board (extra credit) for students to reflect on the past twelve months. In particular, I want students to evaluate what they perceive as the pace of or lack of change.    A point of context for this discussion: in women’s history classes we examine the dramatic shift in employment from service areas to the defense industry experienced by American women during the two world wars. In 1917 and 1942, for example, millions of women saw their work lives change dramatically with higher wages and better opportunities. The post-war periods, however, saw those same working-women struggle to maintain the economic gains they had made during the war years. Ultimately most returned to low-paying jobs. In other words, short-term change came and went quickly. Long-term change is still a work in progress.   I’m hopeful that this no-stakes assignment will provide the students with an opportunity to share observations and insights about the past twelve months across their diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. I plan to leave the discussion board open for several weeks so that students have time to consider each other’s perspectives and contribute thoughtful responses. I’d love to hear from other faculty seeking ways to help students to grapple with the events of 2020. ... View more

Attending OAH ‘21? We’d love to “see” you there! Macmillan Learning will have a virtual booth where we’ll have info on new offerings (print and digital), on-demand videos, a chance to win prizes, and more!   Macmillan Learning Speakers Include:  Mia Bay (Freedom on My Mind Author) Fitz Brundage (Bedford Series Author) David Blight (Bedford Series Author) Ernesto Chavez (Bedford Series Author) Kathi Kern (Bedford Document Collection Author) Stephen Mihm (Bedford Series Author) Kevin Mumfort (forthcoming Bedford Document Collection Author) Elizabeth Shermer (forthcoming Bedford Document Collection Author)   Request an exam copy:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfTKjEu8NKorrPOHf4csSYKzbwQW_g0uIBs4svAqDLdp23DWA/viewform   Learn More about OAH: https://www.oah.org/   Watch our latest webinar: Crisis in Context: Teaching American History Virtually From Past To Present   Macmillan History: We've Got You Covered!     Who We Are | Our Community | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Our Student Store   ... View more

The controversy surrounding six of Theodor Geisel’s books that will no longer be published or licensed by Dr. Seuss Enterprises has led several of my former students to reach out and reflect upon the brief time we spent studying the illustrator’s World War II-era cartoons. Every semester my US History II students use the digital collection Dr. Seuss Went to War as part of our discussion of race on the home front. In light of the current debate, Geisel’s war-time cartoons offer a hands-on way for students to examine the artist’s controversial works without directly having to access the six books in question. More importantly, the cartoons create an opportunity for reflection on how depictions of people of color in popular culture have changed over the course of our national history and the evolution of what we as a society deem “acceptable.”    When studying the World War II-era cartoons, I ask students to think about how a person of Japanese heritage might have responded to Geisel’s stereotypical renderings of Japanese leaders. Year after year, my students consistently cite Geisel’s depiction of legions of Japanese-Americans lining the Pacific coastline to receive their share of dynamite in “Waiting for the Signal from Home” (February 1942) as problematic: a group of people, the vast majority of which were US citizens who expressed no support of a Japanese invasion of the United States, were portrayed as willing participants in a possible attack on the nation. How, the students ask, could people of Japanese descent counter accusations of sedition and treason in a climate in which the mainstream media depicted them as guilty?   In a piece for The Atlantic titled “In Our House Dr. Seuss Was Contraband,” (March 2021) Michael Harriot describes his African-American mother’s disdain for Seuss’s depiction of people of color as the primary reason why his books were not allowed in Harriot’s childhood home in the 1970s. “I assumed most people knew that Seuss, despite the support he expressed for civil rights, was capable of depicting human beings of other races in demeaning ways,” Harriot writes. “Painting Seuss as a victim of rabid ‘wokeness’ is like saying police brutality is a recent epidemic that began when people started uploading cellphone footage.”   Harriot’s piece ends with a cautionary note: “The issue matters because the images children see and the words they hear are small but important parts of the person they eventually become.” Recognizing the errors of our national past does not erase or “cancel” them, but instead opens the proverbial door to deeper dialogue and greater understanding. As historians, it is our job to help our students embrace the collective walk through that open door. ... View more

For the past year, Macmillan Learning has been auditing our textbooks in an effort to ensure our content is fully inclusive and reflective of the diverse audiences who use our resources. During this process, we discovered unacceptable content in our World History textbooks, Ways of the World (all editions), by Robert Strayer & Eric Nelson. We recognize how deeply hurtful it is to see language like this and we apologize unreservedly for its inclusion. While the authors included this historical reference to demonstrate the deep and widespread racism that fueled the British colonial era, this could and should have been illustrated without the use of offensive terminology.  Creating educational products that are diverse, inclusive, and non-offensive is a priority for us as a company. Copies of the textbook that include this language will no longer be delivered to any colleges or universities. We are in the process of revising our student editions and e-books to remove this reference.  Moving forward we will include a broader and more diverse group of reviewers and apply stricter guidelines that have been developed in the last year to all of our teaching and learning materials to create better and more inclusive content. Our audit will continue and we will take immediate action on any further issues that are identified. If you want to participate in our process or if you find content that you feel needs to be reviewed, we invite you to contact us at belonging@macmillan.com.  Charles Linsmeier Executive Vice President, General Manager Macmillan Learning ... View more

APRIL 01 | 12:00 PM ET   Americans are presently enduring at least five overlapping crises: political representation; racial justice; public health; economic crisis due to the pandemic; and the climate crisis. American history scholars and Macmillan authors Rebecca Edwards, Eric Hinderaker, and Robert Self explore American crises throughout our nation's history raising questions like: What have other moments of political, economic, and epidemiological crisis looked like? How did we get here? Using historical context to make sense of these "unprecedented times," our panelists discuss these questions and pedagogical techniques to help students learn remotely.   Watch the recording VIEW RECORDING HERE ... View more

One of the greatest professional disappointments of the COVID-19 pandemic for me personally was the necessary cancellation of the 2020 Organization of American Historians (OAH) Annual Meeting. I had been super excited to participate in a panel called “State, Society, and ‘Correcting the Body,’” during which I would have presented research begun during my 2019 sabbatical. Instead I spent that April weekend in lock down, at home, helping my students and my own children transition to fully remote classes. I truly missed the opportunity to engage with fellow historians and teachers, and to hear about the new research happening in our field. This week, therefore, I want to encourage us all to visit the online resources of the many professional organizations dedicated to supporting our teaching and research.   Most of us belong to at least one professional organization. Maybe, like me, you have a pile of publications in your home office waiting to be read when the challenge of recording online lectures and holding virtual meetings with students wanes this summer. Don’t wait, however, to visit the organization’s web sites, many of which have been updated to support remote teaching and learning. Here are just a few examples:   The Organization of American Historians (OAH) is moving forward with this year’s Annual Meeting, Pathways to Democracy, virtually and has a robust schedule of panels and speakers available through their website. The event features both live and on-demand content this year, as well as workshops and discussion groups. The American Historical Association (AHA) has a particularly useful collection of online resources available through their Teaching & Learning Remote link, which reflect the wide-range of areas studied by AHA members. Materials are listed chronologically, geographically, thematically, and by resource type.    Visit the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations website for a list of articles on teaching foreign relations to secondary and post-secondary students, in addition to suggested syllabi and assignments. The site also includes an extensive list of digital archives useful for students researching US foreign relations. The Society for History Education has past issues of their publication, The History Teacher, archived on their website, allowing visitors access to dozens of articles on the practice and process of teaching history. Scrolling through the vast collection is a great way to think about refreshing lectures and topics in our courses with new research. Finally, check out the American Social History Project’s list of History Resources for educators. Their current work on Teaching Elections and Mob Violence in US History may be of particular use this semester.   If you’ve let your membership to a professional organization lapse, still visit their site! Many of the resources are offered free-of-charge for student and faculty use. And, of course, consider renewing your professional memberships if you are able. As we approach the one year mark of teaching and learning from home, connecting with fellow teachers and researchers through professional organizations’ web presence is a great way to re-energize ourselves and our virtual classrooms.  ... View more

In Fall 2020, we kicked off our first ever Black History, Black Stories contest. Both Professors and students were invited  to answer the prompt in either a 300-word essay and picture-or a-brief video: “How are you drawing inspiration from historical Black events, movements, and leaders?” Please congratulate the following winners! Instructor Winners   1st Place: Dr. Bradley Borougerdi                Tarrant County College Southeast Campus   2nd Place Dr. Headley White Bethune-Cookman University   3rd Place  Dr. Shiarnice Burns Houston Community College     Student Winners 1st Place: Charles Walker, Jr.   2nd Place: Maddison Hill   3rd Place: Riell Swann ... View more