More than the Sum of Its Parts

Every history curriculum is historical artifact. It reflects changing notions within the discipline at large: the fields we value (or have valued at some point in the past), the geographical and chronological division of national and regional histories (as imagined currently or long ago), and perhaps the importance we place on methodological think ing, seminar-style teaching, and independent student research. It offers evidence also of department's institutional history: course descriptions written by long since departed or retired, classes that reflect the changing interests of particular at mid career, new courses or entire new fields introduced by recently hired scholars fresh out of graduate school. In many departments, the curriculum is an artifact of accretion rather than design. Several national projects over the past two decades have sought to spur more holistic imagination regarding history curricula. In 1990 the Association of American Colleges (aac) collaborated with twelve learned societies, including the American Historical As sociation (aha), to rethink the content and structure of liberal arts resulting aac/aha report, Learning and the History (1991), became the frame work in which eight received support for two-year project to re-form aca demic majors. Quality in Undergraduate (que) project, launched in the late 1990s by the Trust and the National Association of System Heads in as sociation with Georgia State University, brought together faculty at selected four-year public institutions and partner two-year colleges to devise discipline-based standards or student outcomes for student learning in biology, chemistry, English, his tory, mathematics, and physics Most recently, working group of the National History Center, supported by grant from the Teagle Foundation, has produced white paper, The History Major and Undergraduate Liberal Education (2008), which seeks to offer a more explicit understanding of the relationship between the history major and the broader goals and processes of liberal learning and thereby to encourage discussions about the history curriculum in larger context.1

Curriculum · Genealogy · Mathematical economics · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · History · Mathematics