Primer for Teaching World History

A Primer for Teaching World History is a guide for college and high school teachers who are designing an introductory-level world history syllabus for the first time, for those who already teach world history and are seeking new ideas or approaches, and for those who train future teachers to prepare any history course with a global or transnational focus. Drawing on her own classroom practices, as well as her career as a historian, Antoinette Burton offers a set of principles to help instructors think about how to design their courses with specific goals in mind, whatever those may be. She encourages teachers to envision the world history syllabus as having an architecture: a fundamental, underlying structure or interpretive focus that runs throughout the course, shaping students' experiences, offering pathways in and out of "the global," and reflecting the teacher's convictions about the world and the work of history.

"Antoinette Burton has done everyone who teaches world history a great service: she shows how the most significant new work by scholars can be incorporated in ways that make world history more exciting, satisfying, and successful at introducing students to historical thinking and writing. No one who teaches this survey will remain untouched by what she has to say."—Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles, "Antoinette Burton's concise but meaty book provides essential advice for the many new and experienced instructors faced with the daunting challenge of teaching world history in what are often ever-larger classes. Its emphasis on creating a course around certain design principles is both welcome and timely, allowing instructors to develop a course that is both meaningful and manageable."—Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “What emerges from the work is a portrait of a reflective historian. Burton has created her own course, built on her own specialties in the British Empire and the body. She is thus a knowledgeable and opinionated guide…Therefore, it is a work that should be read and discussed by all serious practitioners.”, “Burton offers guidance for both the area specialist hired to teach a class for which they lack specific training, and the secondary teacher, who, even with an assigned textbook, must choose what shape their course will have…. There is plenty here to engage the experienced classroom teacher…. [T]eachers at every level will find most useful Burton’s description of the many strategies and teaching techniques which she has used successfully.”, “For those writing, teaching, or reading about global Christian history, there is much of value in Burton's volume, and yet it is not just about Christianity. She raises significant issues of meaning, value, and connection…without concluding what must or should be taught. She opens a number of doors for global historical scholarship, but each writer and teacher must decide which ones to enter, and to what purpose.”

Antoinette Burton is Professor of History and Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has written and edited many books, including Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism; The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau; Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History; and After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation, all also published by Duke University Press.