On Top of the World – Details, episodes & analysis

Your hosts discuss Dave's new book: World History Through Case Studies: Historical Skills in Practice. Dave tells us about how studying things like the history of veiling, yoga, or the World Cup will engage your students and help them think like a historian. Ditch the textbook and buy Dave's book! 

Bloomsbury

Amazon

The new AP World History Course and Exam Description (CED) is out and we have to figure out the best and most responsible way to teach it. 

In this episode, Matt interviews Eric Beckman, a veteran teacher and winner of the 2018 William H. McNeill World History Association Teacher Scholarship. What exactly has changed? Where and how should we start this new truncated course? Are Texans taking over World History? How can we best create an anti-racist and global course within the parameters of the new standards? 

With our goal of helping students do better on the exam, making the course more coherent, and making the course less Eurocentric, this episode will help both novice and experienced teachers grapple with the 2019 standards from College Board. 

Links:

Learning, Online by Eric Beckman

Eric's Twitter

The AP World History: Modern CED

Matt and Dave discuss the story of the worst (best?) dinner party in World History! Starting in 1780 in colonial Peru, the rebellion that followed said dinner party was one of the bloodiest of the Age of Revolutions.  Led by the charismatic José Gabriel Condorcanqui Túpac Amaru II and the brilliant Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, the Andean rebellions threatened the 200-year-long order of the  república de indios in South America. 

Your hosts discuss the unique geography of the Andes, the endurance of Inca and sub-Inca authority and culture, the Bourbon reforms that helped spark the rebellion, and the bloody civil war that nearly toppled Spanish control of Peru.

Matt and Dave argue for the inclusion and importance of Túpac Amaru and Túpac Katari revolts alongside the Atlantic Revolutions.  When included in our World History these rebellions challenge the straightforward Enlightenment-to-revolution model and force us to consider both the intensification of economic change in the late 18th-century and resistance to racial hierarchies from below.  

“There are no accomplices here but you and I. You the oppressor, and I the liberator. Both of us deserve to die.”

Recommendations: 

Matt - The Tupac Amaru Rebellion by Charles F. Walker

Dave - The World of Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru by Ward Stavig 

Lord help us, but College Board is back on its bullshit. All our writing, discussing, and protesting got us a whole 250 years! The new start date is 1200 CE.  College Board still doesn't get World History.  Matt and Dave discuss.  

Recommendations:

Matt - The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers, ed. by Ross Dunn, Laura Mitchell, and Kerry Ward

Dave - Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Robert Tignor et al.

Closing Music: "The World Turned Upside Down" by Billy Bragg 

Listen in on Dave and Matt's panel and Q&A at the World History Association in Milwaukee, WI!

Your hosts talk history podcasting and the history of this podcast.  Listen in to hear our plans for the future of the show as well as some great question and suggestions (00:29:54) from our lovely studio audience.  

Thanks for coming to our show and see everyone next year in San Juan! 

P.S. Sorry that some of the audio quality on the audience questions is not as good as we would like it to be!

Matt and Dave continue their interview with Rick Warner! We discuss the announced halving of the AP World History course and the College Board’s condescending and dismissive attitude to the concerns of teachers and professors.  We talk about the CB Open Forum (you can watch the whole thing, here on our Facebook page) and the tone-deaf response from VP Trevor Packer.    

#saveapworld
saveapworld.org

Recommendations:
Dave - Karol Giblin’s comment at the Open Forum (comment starts at 26:00)
Rick - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (RIP)
Matt - Squirrel Cage episode of Parts Unknown
Matt - Africa is a Country
Matt - Barbara Weinstein’s AHA Presidential Address

P.S.  If you are attending the WHA in Milwaukee, our panel is at 9am on June 23.  Come see us!

Matt and Dave sit down with World History veteran Rick Warner to discuss the long arc of the field and the AP exam.  The AP exam revision will be discussed in part 2 of the interview.  Rick argues for the centrality of World History as a teaching field and that “World History is invented in the classroom.” We celebrate the vibrant community of both university and high school faculty over some High West double rye whiskeys.  

Finally, we talk about the multiple narratives in World History, as opposed to the singular narrative often prominent in other fields of the discipline, and the importance of periodization.

Our discussion with Rick will continue in the second part of our interview in which we discuss the recent changes to the AP World History exam and the backlash against College Board's halving of the course.

In a surprise announcement last week, the College Board declared they are cutting out the whole first half of the AP World History curriculum (a.k.a. Periods I, II, & III).  The course is now going to be just World History from 1450 CE.

We think this is a truck load of bullshit.  Tune in to find out exactly what kind of bullshit this is as well as a few reasonable arguments in favor of this change.

However, we mostly want to hear from you.  Please leave us a comment with your thoughts on the change.  Or, if you’d like to leave a voicemail that we can play during our next episode send an email to ontopoftheworldhistory@gmail.com, a twitter message to @podhistory, or a message on our facebook page.

Recommendations:

Dave – Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization by Lionel M. Jensen

Matt – Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History by Richard W. Bulliet

The original “Bro-dels” Matt and Dave tackle Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s The History Manifesto.  How should historians respond to the “crisis of the humanities?”  Your hosts discuss Guldi and Armitage’s ideas of “long-termism,” big data, and the need for public-facing scholarship from the perspective of World History.  While the book has got some great ideas, it seems like the authors have never met any of the world historians, who have been attempting to answer some of the big questions in the Manifesto for the last few decades!  We don’t feel slighted.  Totally not mad.

Don’t worry! Y ou can read the Manifesto for free (see link below).  Take a look and then join Matt & Dave in a wide-ranging discussion of hierarchy in the history academy, dropping enrollment, and Canada’s saddest reactionary, Jordan Peterson.



Links:

The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi and David Armitage

“Rise of the humanities” by Peter Mandler

“The CANADALAND Guide to Jordan B. Peterson”

Prof. Mike Davis: “There Was Once A Generation of Lions” interview by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Recommendations: (00:40:15)

Dave – Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber

Matt – Clio Infra (dataset) by the International Institute of Social History

We’re heading back to the “Blood Lands” of Eastern Europe for a sobering discussion of the uses and abuses of the history of the holocaust from an ecological and global perspective.  We discuss Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning with special guest Andrew Behrendt.  A great listen for teachers who are grappling with how to apply the lessons of the 20th-century with their students.

Recommendations:

Dave – The Logic of Violence in Civil War by Stathis Kalyvas

Andrew – Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany by Alice Weinreb

Matt – The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Odd Arne Westad