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Rapid changes in the context and condition of historical practice (technological, institutional, theoretical) invite practicing historians to entertain experimental techniques for engaging the past: for teaching students; for investigating archives; and for presenting the results of historical inquiry. The authors introduce a form of historically oriented research and writing that shows promise as a way of encouraging genuine immersion in the specificity and alterity of the past. This 'metahistorical' mode, which engages with historical fiction, but also with traditions of rigorous scholarly research, offers a powerful means by which to cultivate historical consciousness, and to promote imaginative historical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history, people, and culture of many African nations have been written, projected, and interpreted in different ways. The contents and variability in the early accounts about African nations, which were based largely on external viewpoints and interests which barely represented the realities in Africa, created confusions about African historiography and affected how Africans, their cultures, and histories were perceived in Western cultures. Drawing on the literature on African historiography, this paper examines Ghanaian History teachers' perspectives of historically significant events in Ghana's past, and how these perspectives translate into classroom practice. Findings demonstrate teachers' consciousness and belief in traditional African cultural practices and the unique modes of preserving and doing African history. The paper makes a case for how African historiography and History education should look different to those conducted in Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative analysis of Irish history at school in the two parts of Ireland from 1921 to the 1990s is proposed here through an examination of history curricula and textbooks. The main focus is on the 1980s and 1990s, which were pivotal decades, usually described as having brought about a gradual convergence between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in terms of the treatment of Irish history within a wider context and related conceptions of Irish identity. The article argues that the new perspectives in fact reveal a dual trend, with elements of convergence but also enduring or even consolidated aspects of distinctiveness or divergence, in the treatment of both Irish history and European history: the more open, more transnational approaches of Irish history went hand in hand with a consolidation of state and regional identifications, as well as with a different view of the place of European history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together the ideas of three writers from the 1880s who argued for an enhanced status for history in the school curriculum. Although there is superficial agreement between the writers in calling for history to develop children's citizenship and patriotism, each conceives these values differently. Focusing on the teaching of history to children in elementary and third-grade schools, this paper suggests that the considerable plurality of views among advocates of history reflects the underdeveloped disciplinary identity of history in the Victorian academy. However, the paper also contends that, in considering the pedagogic complexity of teaching history to children, these writers were engaging with epistemic debates – about the place of myth-histories and the processes of narrativisation – that would not exercise historical philosophers until the late twentieth century. Then, as now, the school curriculum proved fertile ground for discussion about what history is, and what it is for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to offer both an overview of the key issues and controversial policy decisions that defined history education in Korea for the past 10 years and a critical analysis of the actions taken by, and claims exchanged between, the advocates of New Right thinking and their opponents during this period. In doing so, it will point out the following three things. First, there has been a great deal of partisan political interference, more on the part of the right than of the left. Second, there was a strong presence of a nationalist element in the collective efforts made by the left to counter the conservative government's attempts to take firm control of what and how history is taught in schools. Third, both the right and the left played fast and loose with the idea of diversity in order to consolidate their academic and political positions. This was, it will be argued, as much a manifestation of fragmented reflections on relevant epistemological issues as the result of political expediency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the case of Alfred Dove (1844–1916), this article contributes to an emerging line of research on scholarly personae in the history of historiography. It does so by addressing the important but so far neglected question: What exactly does the prism of scholarly personae add to existing historiographical perspectives? The German historian Alfred Dove is an appropriate case study for this exercise, because historical scholarship in Wilhelmine Germany has been relatively well studied, from various angles. Most notably, it has been studied (1) through biographical lenses, (2) from institutional points of view, (3) as the cradle of 'scientific history', with special attention to historical methods of the sort codified by Ernst Bernheim, and (4) in relation to religious and political fault lines that divided the German Empire shortly after the Franco-Prussian War and the Kulturkampf. The thesis advanced in this article is that scholarly personae are a missing link between these four dimensions and therefore a theme of key importance for anyone trying to understand German historical studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical pageants were important sites of popular engagement with the past in twentieth-century Britain. They took place in many places and sometimes on a large scale, in settings ranging from small villages to industrial cities. They were staged by schools, churches, professional organisations, women's groups and political parties, among others. This article draws on contemporary studies of heritage and performance to explore the blend of history, myth and fiction that characterised pageants, and the ways in which they both shaped and reflected the self-image of local communities. Pageants were important channels of popular education as well as entertainment and, although they are sometimes seen as backward-looking and conservative spectacles, this article argues that pageants could be an effective means of enlisting the past in the service of the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay summarizes my work in theory of history, history didactics, historiography, and intercultural humanism. That work is put into the framework of historical culture in the Federal Republic of Germany and its reception examined. Within historical studies, reception has been subdued in Germany but much stronger in Brazil and East Asia. Up to today, the work has also had an effective impact in history didactics in Germany and abroad, however. The essay ends with a critical look at some new trends in the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the development of history teaching in West Germany from the 1970s onwards. When in the early 1970s the relevance of history - both as an academic discipline and as a school subject - was challenged, this led to fierce debates as a multitude of new concepts were being developed. One of these was Annette Kuhn’s revolutionary concept of teaching history which immediately came under attack. This debate - and others - had far reaching consequences. At first glance it was a debate about how to model objects like the English Revolution in a way to make them suitable for the history classroom. At second glance, however, this debate revolved around fundamental issues like the role of history in school, the relation between social sciences and didactics, and history’s relevance for today in general. The debate and its eventual outcome are explained within the framework of Bourdieu’s field theory. The study re-examines the consequences of this debate. In discussing alternatives to Kuhn’s approach, it shows how debates forced upon traditional history led historians to readdress the essentials of historical thinking and thus to gain new theoretical strength which resulted in a stronger position for history at universities and schools as well as in history didactics. This resulted in a specific construction and role of Geschichtsdidaktik in Germany which helps to explain why there is a difference in comparison to other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nation-states needed various ideological apparatuses when they wanted to eliminate traditional loyalties to the pre-modern era and establish a new superordinate identity. As frequently emphasised in conceptual discussions, two elements among these ideological apparatuses come to the fore: historiography and education. While social values that create a national identity have been constructed by historiography continuously from the past to the present, it aims at spreading such values through education. History education at the intersection of these two concepts has occupied a privileged place in the nation-building process. The most concrete examples of this phenomenon are the developments experienced in the context of history teaching in Turkey from 1923 to 1938, also known as the early republican period. The present study, using history textbooks, analyses changes in history teaching and expectations of it between 1923 and 1938, which were the most active years of the nationalisation period in Turkey. The findings of this study indicate that the historiography of the early republican period adopted an anthropology-based understanding in line with the conjuncture between the two world wars and that, in accordance with this understanding, a national identity with ethnic, religious, and political dimensions was intended to be promulgated through history teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Historical thinking’ has a central role in the theory and practice of history education. At a minimum, history educators must work with a model of historical thinking if they are to formulate potential progression in students’ advance through a school history curriculum, test that progression empirically, and shape instructional experiences in order to maximize that progression. Where do they look, and where should they look, in order to construct such models? Over the past several decades, three major strands have developed, one based in the empirically minded and instruction-oriented British Schools Council History Project, a second through the more philosophically oriented German field of history didactics and historical consciousness, and a third in the US. All three had roots in the historiography and philosophy of their own national traditions. Canadian history educators have been working with a pragmatic hybrid defined around six ‘historical thinking concepts.’ While this model has both been highly influential in the reform of Canadian history curricula and prompted adaptations elsewhere, there has been only minimal theoretical discussion exploring the relationship of these concepts to each other or to the three traditions which helped to shape them. This article is a contribution towards filling that gap. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Debates about the purpose and content of history education in schools have been prevalent in most Westernised democratic nations over the last 30 years. Under discussion are essential questions concerning national identity/ies, competing narratives and the aims of history education. The impact of ‘history wars’ has been felt within both Australia and England, as conservative commentators – including politicians and historians – have raised concerns about the depth and effectiveness of history education and have sought to make significant changes to the history curriculum for schools. This analysis examines the history wars in Australia and England, exploring the view that history education has been in danger and/or crisis and examining the curricular implications of a move toward greater recognition of national narratives. It raises some essential tensions that remain regarding two aspects of history teaching in both nations: (1) historiography and (2) chronological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the contemporary theoretical approaches that combine Holocaust studies and genocide studies, and the historiography of the Holocaust with the German occupation of eastern Europe. It analyses the sources of the idea, long dominant in Israeli historiography and among Jewish historians in the United States, that the Holocaust was an event of unique historical significance, as well as the crisis that has beset this perspective since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The place of the national-martyrological view of the Holocaust has been taken by new ideas that seek to incorporate the Holocaust into a broader history of the twentieth century. The article's premise is that the current trend of writing about the Holocaust as part of genocide studies offers only a partial answer to the need to write an integrated history of the Holocaust. It must be supplemented by the development of an approach that incorporates Holocaust studies into the broader national context of the countries and societies in which it took place, particularly eastern Europe, where European Jews were murdered alongside millions of members of the other nations that lived in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Central to this essay is the debate about the ultimate purpose of studying history and about the social role of the historian as it was conducted in the first two decades after the Second World War in Belgium and the Netherlands. Many historians took the view after the war that the study of the past must contribute directly to (political) reconstruction and the shaping of (democratic) public opinion. In the eyes of historians like the Amsterdam Professor Jan Romein and the powerful Belgian Inspector for History Teaching Leopold Flam, historiography should not be focused on knowledge of the past as such, and the same was certainly true of history teaching. On the contrary, the social capital that they represented was founded on their involvement with the present. Against this presentist position there grew the conception that the study of the past for its own sake remained of great importance in post-war society, and in fact that such an orientation towards the past itself and a critical attitude towards those who wished to use history to shape contemporary society could actually help prevent a new dictatorship or a new conflict. This historicist standpoint was regarded as anything but 'aloof' or 'unethical' by its advocates like the Utrecht Professor Pieter Geyl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching and public dissemination of Russian history in post-Soviet historiography has been shaped by a variety of approaches, including state-sponsored interpretations, views expressed in mass culture, and the work of academic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the challenges reference librarians face in identifying primary and secondary sources in the study of history. Labeling sources depends wholly on how they are used. Through better observation of sources in history, librarians can assist instructors and students in the use of primary sources in the classroom and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the history of history education is an under-researched topic worldwide, the international literature about history education contains a clear image of the historical development of the school subject. This image basically consists of a sharp dichotomy between traditional history education, which was largely insensitive to topical affairs and focused on tradition; and modern history education, which placed topical affairs at the centre of attention and critically engaged pupils in the study of history. Despite being very pervasive, this image does not do justice to the complex relationship between past and present in history education. In this article I will attempt to reassess this one-dimensional image by examining the changing relationship between past and present in Dutch history textbooks published between 1945 and 1979. More specifically, the analysis concentrates on the question of how these textbooks dealt with matters of proximity and distance on multiple levels, and how this affected the relationship between past and present in the course of time [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of the recent revolutionary past in post-Napoleonic history education in the Southern Netherlands. From 1794 until 1815 the Southern Netherlands had been incorporated into the French revolutionary state and the Napoleonic Empire, respectively. Often, the experience of the revolution is associated with the birth of a new historical consciousness. I examine the impact that the revolution as a shocking event had on the teaching of history. Did the experience of this shock involve new historical interpretations'? To answer this question, I specifically study how the narratives in use after the downfall of the Napoleonic regime related to previous prerevolution-ary narratives. I argue that post-Napoleonic textbook authors took their narratives from former historians, but particularly adapted the endings of these older histories. This was done differently. On the one hand, the adaptation of former narratives stimulated the spread of new, counter-revolutionary histories. And on the other, new national histories came on the market, in which the addition of the recent revolutionary history played a less crucial role. However, generally, the experience of the revolution as a shocking event did not evoke the feeling of an ever-widening gap between past, present and future in history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the politicization of public debate about Australian history among Australians as of 2012. The author proposes the concept of oral historiography to measure historical understandings in Australia during the early 21st century and argues that the concept permits ordinary Australians a voice in debates about Australian history. The author cites the research project "Whose Australia? Popular Understandings of the Nation's Past," discusses how connected Australians feel to the past, and examines debates about the settlement of Australia.

This article examines the development of women's history in Scotland since the first conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's History (1989). The title is taken from a 1997 article in Scottish Affairs (issue 18), in which Esther Breitenbach asked whether the 'curiously rare' women in Scottish history was a case of the 'suppression of the female in the construction of national identity'. Thus, this study focuses on key themes in the modern period of that history, notably education, the military, politics, labour, religion and literature. It concludes that while the place of women in Scottish history has indeed been asserted since 1989, and different questions are now being asked of the source material, women are still only slowly being integrated into mainstream studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of the history to the state of Bohai, located in the contemporary Russian Maritime Region, which existed from the late 7th and early 10th centuries. The article explores Bohai's relationship with the Chinese Tang Dynasty and Japan and examines what became of the Bohai people after the 10th century. It discusses the study of Bohai in Russia and traces the history of the field to the Russian missionary sinologist Nikita Iakovlevich Birchurin in 1851. It examines the study of Bohai in Russia, China and Korea during the 20th century as well as the lack of study dedicated to Bohai in the West.

Conflicting opinions in Russia on how to view Russian history in general, and the role of Stalin in particular, raise the issue of how to treat painful subjects in school textbooks. As a key goal of education is to inspire students, it is understandable that Russian textbook authors, like those in other countries, may prefer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical research on the Ming Dynasty has been changing visibly during the past 15 years in mainland China. Despite the rapidly increasing publications, the substantive progress in scholarship is unfortunately limited. Many theories and methods in other fields have been introduced into the four sub-fields in the study of Ming History. In these four sub-fields, the rise and expansion of social history are impressive. Nonetheless, the interactions among these sub-fields are becoming more difficult than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common history curriculum was introduced for the first time in Northern Ireland schools in 1991, which attempted to bridge the longstanding gap between Catholic and state schools in this field. This paper outlines the various aspects of the crucial role played by a number of historians from all the major universities in Ireland, North and South, but especially from Queen's University, Belfast, in making this change possible, through the development of new historiographical perspectives on Irish history, but also through their more direct and deliberate drive to popularise these perspectives within Northern Ireland society from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s. This engagement of many historians above and beyond their work as researchers shows that they tried to reconcile their scientific work as academics with a recognition of their social role, thus providing a good illustration of the ambiguous nature of the social function of historians in contemporary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article appraises the field of labour history in its anniversary year and notes that it was one of the earliest specialities to challenge the divisions of the discipline that had reigned supreme since academic History first emerged as a recognized subject in the late nineteenth century. At a time when there was a growing desire to find ways of studying 'social' history, labour history set out to show how this could be done, and to provide a concrete series of concepts, issues, and topics that historians could investigate. It asks whether this well-earned reputation for conceptual innovation and debate has been lost, and concludes that the field is unlikely to be re-energized unless labour historians look beyond national histories to embrace the shift towards transnationalism, as epitomised in the work of Marcel van der Linden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts in Russia to create a nationalistic version of the country's history, in particular the history of Russia's relationship with Europe during the past few centuries, need to be critiqued. Russian history needs to be protected from nationalistic reinterpretations that distort people's views of Russia and its place in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a confusion over and inchoate understanding of how the past is made understandable through postmodernist historical orientation. The purpose of the article is to outline the characteristic features of the postmodernist movement in social sciences, to explain its confrontation with history, to document its critique of the conventional practice of history, and to discuss its implications for history education. The postmodernist challenge to the foundations of the discipline of history is elucidated with an emphasis on its epistemological underpinnings. Implications of postmodernism for the teaching and learning of history are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of journalism as an academic subfield, to try to distinguish it from media history more broadly. In particular, five paradoxes of journalism history are discussed: the lack of historical consensus about what journalism is; the necessity of understanding journalism's past in order to understand both its present and future; the need to understand journalistic traditions across national boundaries, despite its typically national focus; the threat to journalism from its own popularizing role; and the role of technology in driving journalistic change.

Given that historians have a voracious interest in studying the distinctiveness of cultures aross the world and across time, why do they have so little interest in learning or borrowing from the temporal and historical cultures of those places? This essay offers a practical case study of Buddhism, looking both at the richness and radical difference of Buddhist temporalities, as well as asking how these ideas might be used by modern writers to make histories. Its special focus is on the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, and, most especially, Zen. Through studies of Zen time texts, I conclude that an appreciation of Buddhist 'history' on its own terms might entail an abandonment of almost all the central premises of empirical history. This might become one starting point for the globalisation of History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodernism offers a new appreciation of the complex interplay between history and the historical memory or consciousness of individuals, groups, and societies as filtered through oral transmission, fiction, and the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces, first, a well-researched historiography and the writings on "world history" in Japanese academic circles from the late 1940s to the 1980s. It discusses the influence of Marxism and modernization theory in postwar Japanese historiography, the efforts by Japanese historians to explore the field of world history, and some of their meaningful results. It then provides an overview of the recent development of a "new global history" in Japan from the mid-1980s to the present, centering on the team at Osaka University and its collaborations with scholars outside Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Israel, changes in history teaching and the publication of new history textbooks in recent years triggered a stormy public controversy that went far beyond the content of the books themselves. The disputes over how history should be taught revealed the state of transition that had characterized Israeli society since the beginning of the 1990s. The perennial controversies over the history curriculum are actually a culture war over the 'space of collective memory'. This space is a battleground because it is here that the perception of normative identity and society's future image begin. There are many signs that Israel is beginning to turn away from the unifying memory imposed by the canonical Jewish-Zionist narrative when the State of Israel was first established as a sovereign entity; but, as the state celebrates its sixty-first anniversary, no other solid, bonding set of narratives has yet been constructed to take its place. This article seeks to show that history-teaching in Israel is still a bone of contention - caught in a tug-of-war between conflicting ideals. The article will argue that the more history teaching in Israel succeeds in freeing itself of the victimized, stereotypical and defensive perception that attended it from its beginnings, and the more history students develop as historical thinkers who think independently and critically, there is a better chance of cultivating peace education in young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to the history of the craft of historicisation, the present study explores connections between historical writing and historical experience. These connections are analysed through two youthful documents of historical writing by the Belgian medievalist Francois Louis Ganshof (1895-1980), dating from his schoolboy days. The brief texts in question yield a unique perspective on the processes of learning and emulation that constituted young Ganshof's practical knowledge of historicisation. This knowledge pertained for example to his use of references to historical objects and works of art, the discursive means of which he disposed for describing actions and events, or, indeed, the affects and passions he inscribed into his juvenile elaborations. Specific modes of deploying history in bourgeois Bruges at the beginning of the twentieth century - modes on which scholarly practices of historical writing had already made their imprint - are shown to have been foundational for this intricate, local and particular constellation. Ganshof's later, ostentatiously dispassionate practice of historical writing was durably informed by his early learning experiences and the affectivity they had forged. The linkage between writing and historical experience was intimate and indissoluble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project of compiling a new Qing History (Qingshi) that is different from A Draft History of the Qing (Qingshigao) is the result of the academic development in the social sciences and an indication of the progress in society. It marks the new millennium that we have just entered. The project should take advantage of the newly discovered documents and other historical materials and should aim to be comprehensive in coverage and superior in quality. In addition, this project will perform the important function of saving the cultural heritage of the Qing dynasty by organizing, categorizing, and archiving the voluminous amount of materials and artifacts that dynasty has left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines W.E.B. Du Bois' rearticulation during the 1940s of his long-standing idea that African liberation was a necessary step in the creation of a more democratic world. Du Bois' writing of Africa into world history, as both land of civilizational achievement and object of western terror, helped make the case for a global frame of economic justice and, concomitantly, an extension of human rights. He hoped as well to explore the possibilities of political organization and affective belonging that might draw Africans further within the global community. This essay concludes by considering how Du Bois' historiographical project provides a substantial challenge to the global racial order in our 'colonial present'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1945, history studies in Taiwan have been primarily influenced by three factors: (1) the Japanese colonial legacy; (2) the continuance of modern Chinese historiography from the mainland; and (3) the importation of Western historiography. As a result of interactions of various historiographies, diversification characterizes Taiwan's historical study. A number of research articles have discussed this characteristic, yet there has not been a comprehensive study. One of the ways to explore the development of history studies in Taiwan after 1945 is to study its historians, academic institutions and publications, master's and doctoral theses, and academic journals. The major function of historical journals is to disseminate new knowledge and to exchange academic ideas. All together eight history journals in Taiwan are studied in this article: Continent Magazine (Dalu zazhi), Youth Quarterly (Youshi xuezhi), Thought and Words (Si yu yan), Chinese Cultural Renaissance Monthly (Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yuekan), Shih-huo Monthly (Shi huo), Bulletin of the Historical Association of the Republic of China (Zhongguo lishi xuehui shixue jikan), Chinese Historical Review (Shixue pinglun), and New History (Xin shixue). Using quantitative analysis, this article is an attempt to study their content and interests, summarize the historical theories and methodologies introduced in them, and discuss the direction of historiographical trends in Taiwan from 1945 to 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the growing interest Taiwanese history, Taiwanese historians specializing in Chinese history should reposition themselves and develop a sensible strategy in order to make new and distinct contributions to the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophical background of the subject history in secondary education has been mainly addressed through research based on 'obvious' source types (curricula, discussions in committees or journals, ...). This article proposes a narrative method of analysing history textbooks in order to study the underlining historical philosophy of history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an overview of the development of China's world history studies from the second ha If of the nineteenth century to the present. By reexamining their own past, the authors list the bitter experience of the discipline of Chinese history as a whole in the twentieth century. While earlier Chinese scholars, who finished their studies in the West and returned to China in the 1930s and 1940s, made great efforts to establish a very good foundation for China's world history research and education, such a foundation was brutally replaced by the leftist Stalinist dogma of the 1950s. The infamous Cultural Revolution through the 1960s and 1970s caused even more damage. It was not until after China's opening up and reform started in the late 1970s that the discipline of history in China finally saw any hope of healthy development. The authors summarize the gains and losses during the last century in almost every aspect of their research, touching on numerous topics involving world history studies. This self-examination will help readers have a broad view of what happened in China and a better understanding of the current situation in China. As the authors point out, Chinese historians are determined to carry on China's long tradition of world history studies, learn from their counterparts in other countries, and work hard to establish a true Chinese school of historical thinking so as to make a greater contribution to the development of human civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization calls for the writing of global history. However, a fully "globalized" global history does not exist, just as there is no real "cultural globalization." The diversity of global culture determines the diversified nature of global history, that is, each nation has a global history in the light of its own history. For each nation, the basic function of historical study and writing is to preserve and transmit its own historical memory, and this continuation will not be terminated by either globalization or "global history." Moreover, the independent historical memory of each nation encompasses interpretations not only of its own history but also of those of other countries, as well as of world history as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presentism is generally regarded as a necessary evil in historiography. This paper explores the upside of that inevitability. Using a philosophical approach to discourse analysis in the tradition of new cultural history, the paper distinguishes between a strategic use of presentism on the one hand, and a rationalistic approach to history on the other hand. The paper concludes by considering some political implications of rationalistic accounts and strategically presentistic accounts in historiography. Rationalistic accounts inscribe expectations of the past into visions of the future; they cast the historian in the role of prophet; and they perpetuate notions of ahistoric agency. In contrast, strategically presentistic histories incorporate an orientation that deliberately uses the lenses and perspectives of the present in order to bring current assumptions and perspectives into focus. When assumptions are examined in relation to presentistic perspectives, those assumptions loosen their reins on thought. Since presentism is unavoidable, presentism should not be dismissed outright, but ought to be subject to probing and critical examination. With such a focus, strategically presentistic historiography allows for a reflection on the limits of what it is possible to think. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will undertake a critical review of the impact of virtual reality tools on the teaching of history. Virtual reality is useful in several different ways. History educators, elementary and secondary school teachers and professors, can all profit from the digital environment. Challenges arise quickly however. Virtual reality technologies show great pedagogical promise in the presentation of research. It is also asserted that these technologies provide real-world immersion in the 'historical past' in a way that was previously not possible. Can these systems truly take the place of classrooms, elementary and secondary, and the research projects of graduate studies? Ultimately, technological optimists argue that these technologies create an 'alternate reality'. Can history educators agree to such an 'alternate reality'? The principle conclusions drawn in this paper include a need for further development of virtual simulations, both in terms of their realism and the immediacy of the classroom experience. Further practical experimentation by history educators in the research environment is also key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Anglophone educational research in the United States, the name Foucault has been more pointedly celebrated in some subfields such as curriculum studies relative to its more noticeable censorship in subfields such as history of education. This paper illustrates how such differential epistemological politics might be accounted for through reapproaching the challenges to historiography that Histoire de la Folie (Madness and Civilization) raised. Through the formalist lens of performative apophasis, and with attention to the dependencies of discourse that characterize narrative prosthesis, this paper re-engages the least referenced of Foucault's major histories in the educational field to bring into noticeability other ‘conditions of possibility’—ones that explicate how an apophatic turn might account for divergent reactions to less familiar philosophies of history and/or to ‘alternative’ approaches to documents through which history is now being narrated and critiqued in education and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses how far it is possible to discern any form of what we might term a Whitean sensibility amongst contemporary practitioners of the history of international politics. An audit of contemporary practice reveals a good deal of work which is frankly disappointing by the yardstick of White, some of which reflects at least a degree of sensitivity to his concerns, and some of which demonstrates both his clear stimulus and hopeful portents for the fruitful future application of his ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is not an immediately obvious aspect of White's oeuvre, much of his theorizing is based on a particular conception of the reader of histories. For him, the reader is no longer a passive creature, simply the recipient of the historians' authoritative messages. Nor is the reader to be ignored by the historian. Rather, the reader is active to such an extent that historical writing - as White sees it - needs to be reformulated to suit this new readership. For White, readers are actively involved in a process of self-creation, to which end they use history. In other words, White holds (what I take to be) a Sartrean view of readers as individuals who are engaged with the world and embrace and pursue beliefs and goals of their own, even when under the influence of a historical text. While attributing such views to White is admittedly a projection from implicit assumptions underlying his theories, it is supported by the elusive political positions he oftentimes appears to occupy. White's underlying - and pervasive - emphasis on readers as capable of irony also informs his demand for new forms of historical writing. Alternative histories are needed not so much because the profession of history needs to change and perpetuate itself but because the demands of the society in which it is located (as well as the preferences of the individual consumers of academic history) reveal it to be an increasingly redundant practice in its conventional form. To arrive at a better understanding of White's overall conception of the role of history in the world, his epistemological scepticism needs to also be interpreted in these terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this qualitative research study, the author investigated social studies teachers' conceptions of history by conducting in-depth, semistructured interviews with 12 in-service teachers. Results indicated that participants tended to look at the outcome of historical knowledge construction without considering its process or mentioning forces that shape historical writing. Rather than considering the whole relationship or interplay between the past, the recorded past, and the historian, participants observed a part of the relationship among distinctive yet interrelated components of history. A realistic view of the world and a naive epistemological view of history seemed to characterize the conceptions of most participants who viewed history as objective knowledge. Most participants did not perceive the relevancy of intellectual foundations of history to their profession and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the external factors influencing Russian historical scholarship after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The following identity crisis created a “social demand” for history. But, paradoxically, this great interest (toska po istorii) proved harmful to the history profession as a whole. The crisis in Russian historical scholarship is illustrated by the depressing working conditions at the history institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and, especially, at the Institute of Slavic Studies. The crisis in the discipline was eventually brought to an end in 2001 when President Putin decided to assign professional historians a key role in his long-term nation-building project. Additionally, the main trends in post-Soviet historical research are discussed. It is doubtful whether a change of paradigm has taken place. Many Russian historians have replaced the Marxist formational theory (formacionnyj podchod) by a civilisational approach (civilizacionnyj podchod) and, accordingly, they have prioritised political and cultural history at the expense of socio-economic history. But other historians - perhaps the majority - are still adherents of a “flexible” variant of the formational theory. To-day, there is no longer - as in the 1990s - a conflict between the two camps. A consensus seems to have arisen on a “multifaceted” approach (mnogofaktornyj podchod) to the driving forces of history. This means that, for example, it is legitimate to ascribe greater importance to geographical, ethnic, religious and foreign policy factors than was customary in Soviet history writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines changes in Zimbabwean secondary school history syllabi and textbooks, specifically their treatment of the issue of race; and relates these developments to larger social forces at work after 1980. A nationalist, Africa-centred and Marxist-inspired history syllabus was introduced in 1991; it was revised in 2000 and replaced in 2002 by one that was narrower, less comparative and with less emphasis on the development of critical reading and interpretive skills. In each instance, history was made to 'play its role'. Drawing on evidence from the syllabi, authors, teachers and schools, this article argues that although the first nationalist syllabi and textbooks were distinct improvements over their Rhodesian-era predecessors, they presented polarising messages along racial lines to a burgeoning school population. In conjunction with the passive 'live and let live' style of racial reconciliation in wider society, these educational circumstances contributed to a social avoidance of large-scale racial targeting, while racial identity and citizenship simultaneously came to be seen through the lens of political expediency. Although state-sponsored violence and propaganda certainly spread in the period under review, the article also suggests a possible counter-trend: that the promulgation of 'patriotic history' in Zimbabwe might find itself tempered to some extent by the country's educational structures, traditions and conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential of the graphic novel as a means to approach history and historiography in secondary school social studies and history classrooms. Because graphic novels convey their messages through the interaction of visuals and written text, they require reading that is across the grain. They have been likened to hypertext, a format with which students are increasingly familiar, because they are flexible and open-ended and can be approached in multi-layered ways, and read along both linear and nonlinear paths. This format holds promise for increasing students' tolerance of ambiguity and appreciation for the nature of history as interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes the results of an experimental class co-taught by an historian and a social studies educator. The class was designed to accomplish two things: to narrow the gap in disciplinary thinking between preservice teachers and historians, and to overcome the preservice teachers' compartmentalized thinking about the nature of their newly acquired historical knowledge and the teaching of it. Through an analysis of the teacher candidates' final projects, which included an historiographic essay, rationale statement, and teaching unit, I demonstrate that the course was only marginally successful with the first objective, but considerably more successful in achieving the second. I suggest that disciplinary thinking may be more useful as a means of improving pedagogy than as an end in itself, and I conclude with a reflection on how the course could have been strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]