Announcing the publication of World History Connected, Vol. 10 no. 1 issue, February 2013

“Travelers and Traveler’s Accounts in World History” are the subjects of World History Connected's February 2013 Forum section, in which leading scholars of travel-related historical literature, both global and regional, such as Michael Fisher, offer fresh research and also examine the pedagogical dimensions of these subjects in what is the first of two projected issues on this topic. Guest editor Mary Jane Maxwell provides a pedagogically fulsome introduction to this selection of articles, further enhancing its value for practitioners of world history at all levels of instruction.

The essays in the Articles section range from a fresh, as well as inspiring, exploration of using maps in the world history classroom to a study of the concept of a developing identity as revealed by a study of iconic representations in Hong Kong to articles reflecting on the nature of exploring controversial subjects, including one by Jeffery Race on how he wrote and disseminated a masterwork on one of the most controversial subjects in recent history: counterinsurgency in Vietnam.

The Book Review section, which, with its review of Kenneth R. Curtis and Valerie Jensen’s travel-account rich text, Voyages in World History (2011), continues the Forum’s traveler and traveler’s accounts theme,  suggests why the February 2013 issue of World History Connected is dedicated to Jerry H. Bentley. Bentley was a Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who passed away July 15, 2012 at age 62 in Honolulu. Among his many works is a seminal essay on the significance of travel narratives to the historical profession, in which he reminded us that, “In a way, all historical thinking and all historical writing deal with travel accounts.” 

There is a Bentley element to the much of the remainder of the Book Review section. Jon Davidann reviews Jerry H. Bentley’s edited work, The Oxford Handbook of World History (2011), and Heather Streets-Salter reviews Jon Davidann and this writer’s new book, Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History (2013). Readers of these reviews will learn that Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History was designed to serve as a sequel to Jerry Bentley’s Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modem Times (1993), a task Jerry long ago decided not to take on himself and encouraged these authors to take up. They also should know that Heather Streets-Salter is the author of the Brief Edition of Jerry Bentley and Herb Zeigler’s well-established world history survey text, Traditions and Encounters. Thus does Bentley’s work live on in service to the field as well as in fond memory.

WHC welcomes articles on the subject of world history that are both research and pedagogical in focus and is particularly interested in articles that “connect” the two. As coming revisions in the Advanced Placement Examination in World History expect teachers and students to engage world historical scholarship as a form of best practice, WHC is all more interested in submissions that offer models for such analysis.        

Future topics the staff of World History Connected hope to explore include the following for which submissions are also encouraged:

Architecture in World History
Implications for World History in Educational Reform (Common Core, etc)
Islam in World History
Jesuits and other Missionaries in World History
Mercenaries in World History (especially as vehicles of cultural exchange)
The Military in World History
Southeast Asia in World History
Technology in World History (also the Digital Revolution and the Classroom)
Travelers and Travel Narratives in World History (continuing WHC’s interest in this subject)
The United States in World History
Vietnam in World History

With the anniversaries associated with the First World War and the Second Indochina War are approaching or are upon us, essays in the Military in World History are also welcome, as are any submission which explores world historical processes.

Marc Jason Gilbert
NEH Endowed Chair in World History
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Hawaii Pacific University