Uncovering Western History, Volume 2

The module will include literature (poetry and selected excerpts from fiction) and personal narratives to explore the issue of individual experience in WWI. Selections range from 1914 to 1930 to show change over time. How “true” is literature and how do historians use literary sources? How can historians use individual voices to tell a larger story about an important world event? One focus of this module is to emphasize the thick reading of a sin...

Students will encounter multiple versions of several narratives from US and global history across multiple eras. These will include accounts of post-Civil War Reconstruction in America and ‘the rise of the west’/creation of the modern world. Personal, family, and national narratives will be incorporated, as well.

The first central question the module will help students examine is, How do historians and other scholars create, contest, and modify n...

The story of Francis Drake in world history begs many questions, but perhaps it is at core a question of who owns history, or who “curates” the legacy of a national hero (or in the case of Spain, a favorite villain)? Drake is a classic ‘national hero’ vs. ‘arch-villain.’

What is Operation Legacy? refers to the British policy of willfully destroying or removing colonial documents that were deemed “incriminating” to the British government. This policy took place over more than two decades (1950s – 1970s) and was imposed just prior to when British colonies were to get their political independence. Its objective was to keep information out of the hands of the incoming governments of soon-to-be politically independent...