CfA: Issues & Controversies in History

Facts On File is hiring historians and writers on a freelance basis to contribute articles to Issues & Controversies in History, a database in world history targeted to high school and college students. Each article will focus on a specific question encapsulating a debate or conflict in global history. MANY TOPICS ARE STILL AVAILABLE, including Revolution, Slavery, Colonialism, Empires, War, and Technology.

Overview
Issues & Controversies in History places students at the center of the great debates and conflicts in global history. It brings history to life not as a mere recitation of names and dates but as a set of turning points where the future hung in the balance and opinions raged on all sides. By exploring the issues as the key players saw them, or, in some cases, as historians have interpreted them, the database will build a deeper understanding of how historical events and conflicts have shaped world history.

Goal
The goal of Issues & Controversies in History is to present history as a dynamic process of controversies, conflicts, and issues that people debated and experienced and ultimately made choices about. The “issues and controversies” approach will help personalize the engagement with global perspectives, reminding students and teachers that world history doesn’t have to take a distanced point of view, but rather can also be about linking local individual actions and events to the larger global experience. Students will learn that in spite of the vastness of the past, the daily lives of individuals also comprise the building blocks of world history and that the choices made by individuals—be they merchants, rulers, farmers, or slaves—have shaped world history for thousands of years.

Format
Each article poses a single historical question and is presented in pro/con format. Some of these focus on specific controversies and events (e.g., Did Constantine’s conversion to Christianity transform the Roman Empire? Should Tsar Alexander emancipate the serfs? Should La Malinche have helped Cortés in the Spanish conquest of Mexico? Should West African states have rejected the importation of European guns? Should Britain and France intervene during the U.S. Civil War?). Other articles focus on broader historical issues and comparative questions (e.g., Did the spread of world religions benefit women in ancient societies? Did resistance to slavery shape ideas of freedom? Were merchants or missionaries more important in the spread of early religions? Did the Mayan Empire decline because of internal dissent or environmental change?).

Each article provides all the essential information to enable a student to both understand the issue and its significance and answer the question in specific world history contexts. Every article contains an introductory highlight box summarizing the issue and the two competing positions; a narrative essay providing historical background of the issue/event; an argument section presenting both sides of the controversy, with quotations from primary sources used as evidence to support each position; a selection of primary sources (on which the arguments are based and which are referenced and quoted in the article); a chronology; a sidebar; discussion questions; bibliography; and a “what if” section contemplating what could or might have happened had the alternative side prevailed.

Scope
As a whole, articles are designed with an aim toward achieving a narrative balance among historical eras and the broadest possible coverage of global geographical regions and peoples.

Contact
Facts On File is currently seeking authors for this exciting new database, and many articles are still available. If you are interested in being an author or would like more information, please contact Andrew Gyory, Ph.D. at agyory@infobaselearning.com; or Facts On File, 132 West 31st Street, New York, N.Y. 10001.

CfP: Violence and Conflict Workshop, University of Cambridge

The Violence and Conflict Workshop invites graduate students to submit papers to be presented in Lent Term 2016. The workshop is interested in submissions which explore the themes of violence and conflict, understood both in physical manifestations such as war, crime, rebellion, etc., as well as psychological/systemic forms including colonialism, slavery, and discrimination. We encourage submissions from any regional or geographical focus, and from Late Antiquity to the present day.

We welcome both works in progress and completed projects, as well as graduate research in its early stages of development. Papers should be approximately 30 minutes and will be followed by discussion and light refreshments. The workshop will meet every Friday at 4pm in Room S3 of the Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to violence.conflict@gmail.com no later than 3 January 2016.

CFP: ‘Colonialism, War and Photography’, King’s College London

Colonialism, War & Photography
King’s College, London – 17 September 2015

Part of the HERA research project, ‘Cultural Exchange in Times of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War‘, based at King’s College London.

Using the First World War as a focal point, this interdisciplinary one-day workshop aims to examine the complex intersections between war, colonialism and photography. What is the use and influence of (colonial) photography on the practice of history? What is the relationship between its formal and historical aspects? How are the photographs themselves involved in the processes of cultural contact that they record and how do they negotiate structures of power?

Keynote & Discussant: Prof Elizabeth Edwards
Director, Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University

Convenors: Dr Santanu Das & Dr Daniel Steinbach
King’s College London

Participants should send abstracts of up to 300 words for a 20-25 minute paper, a short biography, and any enquiries to daniel.steinbach@kcl.ac.uk by 31 July 2015.

Further information: CfP_Colonialism, War & Photography