Invisible Adjunct

I'd agree with much of what IA says in response to my posting. In fact, I'd agree with almost all of it.

I don't argue against interdisciplinarity across the broad--only what seems to me a dangerous default setting in which the contemproary academy assumes that interdisciplinary approaches are necessarily superior. There are lots of questions for which interdisciplinary approaches are clearly appropriate. For instance, several years ago, I participated in a summer seminar at the Supreme Court Historical Society organized around the theme of the presidency and the Constitution, which brought together professors of political science, the law, and history. The question framed by the seminar was one that yielded itself to an interdisciplinary approach.

Likewise with the "Great Books" course that IA mentions--another type of question (this one curricular) that yields itself to interdisciplinarity.

As IA mentions, however, the interdisciplinary approach has frequently been associated with the race/class/gender trinity, and used therefore as a way to privilege this interpretation of the past.

The focus on class in particular is probably no more than what, 160 years old?

Just a question semi-apropos of all this: If History departments are filled with liberals, then why is it that the most politically liberal people I know have grave doubts about the validity of World History and advocate simply adding a broader range of topics to the canon, while on the H-world list, there seems to be a definite intention to repress evil, conservative Western Civ?

Good question, ADM. I taught in a history department which offered "World History" as its introductory survey course. The problem was that "World History" is just an overwhelming challenge. Even my very best students were just swamped with an introductory look at South Asian and Chinese history. _Everything_ about them seemed just all too alien. Consequently, while maintaining the course title, the department adopted informal rules which barred teaching staff from attempting to cover those fields. In effect, we taught a first semester "Meditteranean World" and a second semester "Atlantic World," with heavy additives of African history to a traditional "Western Civ" frame.
Except for the violation of truth in advertising, it worked reasonably well. There was no constituency to challenge the ignoring of Eastern Civ and, truth to tell, the faculty was ill-prepared to teach it.

ADM,

That is indeed interesting. I, too, witnessed this when I last taught in Ethnic Studies. I was probably the "conservative" one, for simply not conducting sections on "why all white people are evil" (a student, in fact, thanked me for this), even though at the ballot box my former colleagues on I will most likely be on the same side.

I really don't want to get into the World Civ question right now: I have to go home and prepare to teach the post-1500 Turko-Islamic Empires. Good thing my students agreed to put the quiz off a day so I could actually spend a full 45 minutes on the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires....

As much as there is to complain about a class where you are teaching everything in two semesters, there's some things to be grateful for. I taught Western Civ before I came here, and I always felt like I was teaching with blinders on: all of a sudden "the West" goes out into the world or sometimes the world comes in and "attacks" the West..... all very incomprehensible and more than a little triumphalist.

I love teaching World Civ. I have the advantage of having a strong background in Western Civ, thanks (mostly) to teaching it, and a strong background in Asia, thanks to my undergrad and graduate educations. This leaves only a few areas of the world for me to catch up on, and I'm dancing as fast as I can (when I think they're important: I did spend one class period explaining why I don't know more about Latin American history; it's an interesting historiographical discussion, actually, and students were surprised to hear me admit that not only didn't I know much but that I didn't care that much about the issues that were important there....except that I do, and here's why they were important...). But the great thing about World Civ, is that once you get past the majority of the textbooks (Western Civ texts with a Chinese or Indian historian grafted on) there are a few honest-to-god World History texts (We use Bentley and Ziegler's Traditions and Encounters, and not just because they're at UH-Manoa) which treat the world as a set of interacting regions, instead of discrete ones, and which spend the time and energy to explain interactive processes like trade, which don't stick to strictly regional divisions (the chapters on the Mongols or on the Russian Empire, for example, cross the Asian-Western boundaries quite blithely and very illuminatingly). At the end of it, a student who's paying attention will have a vastly improved idea of how the world works and what the issues are.

There's a lot to complain about, and I do, but it is much more intellectually honest and satisfying than treating "the West" as the world.

I also enjoy my every other year sojourn in World History.

When I first taught it, I did wonder if the reason that the shift to World was so popular was not because it was good for students but because those of us who taught it got to read and learn so much.

I still think there may be truth to that observation (at least in explaning faculty motivation). But more and more I think Jon's right. If taught well, and with a mixture of humility and rigor, alert students will know the world much better.

And so will we. My US courses have improved as a direct result of the broader knowledge I sought in teaching World. I am sure I am not alone in that.

I actually like some aspects of World History -- the parts that require me to broaden my own learning and talk out of my area. I agree that Bentley probably the best book out there, too. However, I find that most of my students have no historical background, so that the connections that seem easy for World Historians to make are actually not at all intuitive for students. Moreover, I find that the approach can often give the students a very false picture of what happened in a particular area, because the parallels that many World History texts draw and connections they make are frequently thematic rather than the results of cross-cultural interaction (e.g., comparing Empires that form at relatively similar times, even if the only thing they have in common is that they are contemporaneous and empires!).

That said, my Western Civ classes now are much more inclusive of other cultures. I add primary and secondary source readings and background lectures for each point of cross-cultural contact (as in, "who are these people and what are they like before the Europeans get there?" and "How does the interaction change both cultures?"). The students like it, but don't find it overwhelming. The later the period of study, the more we talk about what's happening outside Europe. It may be conservative, but it seems to work.