On Top of the World

The new AP World History Course and Exam Description (CED) is out and we have to figure out the best and most responsible way to teach it. 

In this episode, Matt interviews Eric Beckman, a veteran teacher and winner of the 2018 William H. McNeill World History Association Teacher Scholarship. What exactly has changed? Where and how should we start this new truncated course? Are Texans taking over World History? How can we best cre...

Are mountains of bird sh*t, a doctor giving his patients cancer, and the width of screw threads central to the rise of American imperialism? Yes! Matt and Dave discuss How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr.

This a text that will leave North American readers like Matt and Dave, saying "Oh sh*t! That really happened?" It is also history that weaves together mass politics, insane personal st...

Texting in Class makes a triumphal return! Matt and Dave review Panorama: A World History by Laura J. Mitchell and Ross E. Dunn.

Recommendations:

Dave - Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE by Craig Benjamin

Matt - The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott

Dave - Grand Valley Journal of History for undergraduate students

Music:

Angkor - Eri...

Matt and Dave are joined by special guests Henrik Lohmander and Peter Nicholson, computer game designers and historians with Paradox Interactive. We discuss their fascinating jobs working on the historical strategy games, how to break into historical game development, and the challenge of balancing history and player fun. 

Recommendations: 

All - Imperator: Rome

Henrik - A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Live...

New episodes are on the way! In the meantime, you can listen to Matt and Dave talking through some primary source analysis best practices, document analysis, and lesson ideas. We hope that you or your students find this episode helpful!

We originally did this as a video stream for the fine folks over at Fiveable but on the condition that it would be free to the public and that we could share it with our listeners too.

Here is the ...

Put on your masks and get out your account books! Matt and Dave are joined by a very special guest, Dungeon Master Rob! They discuss Seth Dickinson's groundbreaking fantasy novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Although it is a work of fiction, the book's approach to race, queerness, and empire can help us as world historians break free from some of the limitations of the archive. 

Happy Halloween and happy the Monster Baru Cormorant ...

Dave and Matt sit down with Michael Vann to talk about his new graphic history, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.

Your hosts discuss the joy of finding unexpected things in the archive, the necessity of writing a colonial urban history as a world history, the importance of cultural history and thick description, and the opportunities that graphic histories give teachers in the clas...

Reminder: Free registration for the 2018 Great Lakes History Conference!

What is the Cold War to a World Historian? Dave and Matt use Odd Arne Wested's Bancroft-winning book as a launching pad to examine the longue durée of the 20th-century and a global approach to the US-Soviet conflict that centers decolonization and the "Third World."

Recommendations: 

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times...

Matt and Dave discuss the story of the worst (best?) dinner party in World History! Starting in 1780 in colonial Peru, the rebellion that followed said dinner party was one of the bloodiest of the Age of Revolutions.  Led by the charismatic José Gabriel Condorcanqui Túpac Amaru II and the brilliant Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, the Andean rebellions threatened the 200-year-long order of the  república de indios in South America. 

You...

Lord help us, but College Board is back on its bullshit. All our writing, discussing, and protesting got us a whole 250 years! The new start date is 1200 CE.  College Board still doesn't get World History.  Matt and Dave discuss.  

Recommendations:

Matt - The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers, ed. by Ross Dunn, Laura Mitchell, and Kerry Ward

Dave - Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Robert Tignor et al.

Cl...

Listen in on Dave and Matt's panel and Q&A at the World History Association in Milwaukee, WI!

Your hosts talk history podcasting and the history of this podcast.  Listen in to hear our plans for the future of the show as well as some great question and suggestions (00:29:54) from our lovely studio audience.  

Thanks for coming to our show and see everyone next year in San Juan! 

P.S. Sorry that some of the audio quality on the au...

Matt and Dave continue their interview with Rick Warner! We discuss the announced halving of the AP World History course and the College Board’s condescending and dismissive attitude to the concerns of teachers and professors.  We talk about the CB Open Forum (you can watch the whole thing, here on our Facebook page) and th...

Matt and Dave sit down with World History veteran Rick Warner to discuss the long arc of the field and the AP exam.  The AP exam revision will be discussed in part 2 of the interview.  Rick argues for the centrality of World History as a teaching field and that “World History is invented in the classroom.” We celebrate the vibrant community of both university an...

In a surprise announcement last week, the College Board declared they are cutting out the whole first half of the AP World History curriculum (a.k.a. Periods I, II, & III).  The course is now going to be just World History from 1450 CE.

We think this is a truck load of bullshit.  Tune in to find out exactly what kind of bullshit this is as well as a few reasonable arguments in favor of this change.

However, we mostly want to hear f...

The original “Bro-dels” Matt and Dave tackle Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s The History Manifesto.  How should historians respond to the “crisis of the humanities?”  Your hosts discuss Guldi and Armitage’s ideas of “long-termism,” big data, and the need for public-facing scholarship from the perspective of World History.  While the book has got some great ideas, it seems like the authors have never me...

We’re heading back to the “Blood Lands” of Eastern Europe for a sobering discussion of the uses and abuses of the history of the holocaust from an ecological and global perspective.  We discuss Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning with special guest Andrew Behrendt.  A great listen for teachers who are grappling with how to apply the lessons of the 20th-century with thei...

Dave and Matt have read Maya Jasanoff’s new book on the life and times of Joseph Conrad, The Dawn Watch.  We discuss Conrad’s life, and the limits of his vision in the turbulent world of the late 19th-century.  This is a story that has remarkable parallels to our own moment in history: a world of transnational corporations, terrorism, immigration, and disruptive technological change.  Plus, why our w...

On today’s episode, Matt interviews one of his former students, Valeria Alvarado, an immigrant rights activist and an undergraduate History major.  Val co-founded “We, Too, Are America,” an online platform dedicated to fighting the current administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.  The two discuss the undergraduate History experience, navigating the seminar as a woman of color, dealing with tokenism ...