Announcing the Publication of World History Connected 18.1 Latin America in World History
Marc Jason Gilbert, editor of the University of Illinois Press’s journal World History Connected, announces the publication of its Vol. 18, no. 1 issue, designed to expand conceptions of world history, including, but not limited to, the “new” place of Latin America and Latin Americans in world history, at https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/. Its articles provide insight into human agency in Latin America operating within world historical processes such as slavery, revolution, the loss of indigenous peoples and their histories, and the role of food production in the making of history, culture and society. Since many historians are unfamiliar with the recent turn towards a re-consideration of the place of Latin America in world history, this announcement will devote a very short paragraph as to why this subject is important to scholars and scholar-teachers. These comments are followed by:
- Brief Summaries of the curated topical articles on Latin America
- Brief Summaries of individual articles on the treatment of slavery in textbooks produced in Euro-America and in West Africa; “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Person: Jan Kozlowski and the Russian Revolution.”
- The Table of Contents
- About the Journal
The New Place of Latin America in World History
In the fall of 2019, World History Connected began work on this issue designed to further advance the study and teaching of Latin American in World history. It is a subject the journal had taken up almost ten years before. As the introduction to the Forum by Guest editors Rick Warner and Nikki Magie relate, the subsequent slow growth in the number of scholars interested in the region who take advantage of world historical approaches warranted a return to this subject. The Forum is designed to encourage more specialists in the region’s history and world historians to take up that task in keeping with the journal’s dual mission to promote both research and teaching. Forum’s five articles address this mission by 1) providing a brief guide to those with little grounding in the subject, such as most teachers in the Advanced Placement World History program (Monica Bond-Lamberty; 2) employing art to help further establish women as actors/agents in the shaping of course Brazil’s during the “Age of Revolutions,” while also showing how this research can be used to energize discussion of patriarchy and feminism in the classroom (Susanne Litrel); 3) supplying means of mastering the issue of cultural erasure and survival of ingenious people globally through an examination of one such community in Sonora, Mexico (Andrae Marak); 4) demonstrating how Jamaican food, such as the production of salt and “Jerk Chicken,” are a means to study and teach the importance of foodways in the formation of culture and society (Alyssa Sperry); and 5) supplying an up-to-date Digital Resources file that includes a short list fundamental sites for researchers and scholars, an extensive collection of case studies, and a lengthy compendium of teaching approaches prepared by a World History Connected team led by Digital Resources editor John Maunu. All of the Forum’s constituent articles are introduced in depth in the Guest Editor’s introduction.
Individual Articles
The first article, “Missing in Action: Africans in World History Textbooks” (Laura J. Dull), addresses why so many contemporary students think that, during the Atlantic Slave Trade, Africans had no agency, in the sense that Africans were easily snatched up by passing Europeans. Seeking to explore why such an attitude exists, Dull explores the Atlantic Slave Trade as portrayed in Western and African textbooks at pre-collegiate levels of instruction, revealing both the bias that promotes such an idea and also the great value of using these works as a means to explore its cost, which is the erasure of much of modern African history along with African agency.
In the second article, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Person: Jan Kozlowski and the Russian Revolution, Tom Taylo, first calls attention to recent advances in micro-historical approaches, such as the study world history through biography. It then offers an opportunity to study the Russian Revolution through the experiences of a man of low social status revealed through family archival materials, a copy of which is reproduced in the article’s appendices, along with directions on how use them to draw students deeper into the study of world history. As the article provides concise background for each stage of Jan Kozlowski’s epic flight from communist and non-communist factions across the length and breadth of Russia, this article will be particularly useful in settings where instructors and their students have little knowledge of Russian Revolution and even less engaging material for its close study. This is because this ordinary man and his immediate family were so imbedded in the major events of the revolution, including the Russian Civil War and the place American intervention in that conflict, that these subjects can be viewed from one of the most intimate of personal perspectives: that of people, without political affiliation or social rank, trying to survive for one more day.
Table of Contents
Brief Summary of the Issue
Marc Jason Gilbert
Forum: Latin America and World History
Guest Editors, Rick Warner with Nikki Magie
Introduction to the Forum
Rick Warner and Nikki Magie
“Too Despacito: Reflections on Teaching Latin America in the Global Context”
Monica Bond-Lamberty
“From the Margins to the Centre: Brazil in Atlantic and World History”
Suzanne Marie Litrel
“Little House on the Prairie in Sonora: Borderlands, the Comcáac, and World History”
Andrae M. Marak
“Eating Jamaica: How Food is Used as a Tool to Create and Reinforce Cultural Identity”
Alyssa J. Sperry
“Digital Resources for Teaching Latin American History”
John Maunu, Marc Jason Gilbert, and Rick Warner
Individual Articles
“Missing in Action: Africans in World History Textbooks”
Laura J. Dull
“The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Person: Jan Kozlowski and the Russian Revolution”
Tom Taylor
Book Reviews
Eric Paul Roorda, editor, The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020 by Patricia B. Bixel
Chris S. Duvall, The African Roots of Marijuana. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019, by Paul Hoelscher
Bonnie G. Smith. Women in World History: 1450 to the Present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, by Tracey Rizzo
Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912, by Michael Vann
Books available for Review
About the Journal
Throughout its fifteen-year old history, World History Connected (ISSN 1931-8642), has been devoted to research and the scholarship of teaching of history. Its title reflects the journal’s commitment to assisting both scholars and practitioners to invigorate and expand the reach of research and teaching of world history and global studies. It guest editors and editorial staff include past (and now in-coming) presidents of the World History Association and award-winning history educators at all levels of instruction.
The journal’s publisher, the University of Illinois Press, estimates that it currently serves 1.85 million discreet readers of at least two articles annually and receives 6 million visitors to its website. It welcomes submissions of articles and book reviews on any subject germane to world history including (a) essays on the state of the field; (b) case studies, or topical overviews which cross regional boundaries to examine such issues as gender, technology, demography, social structure, or political legitimacy; and (c) the evaluation of curriculum and innovative instructional methodology. The journal also seeks peer reviewers to analyze recently published titles in the field of world history. The journal is open-sourced (free): its staff and contributors are not compensated for their work, and it is funded by individual contributions and organizations committed to advancing its goals. It accepts no paid advertising.
Prospective authors should read and incorporate into their submissions guidelines provided at https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/submissions.html. The journal is normally published 3 times annually (in February-March, June-July and October-November) though COVIN-19 may intervene as it did with the recently released October issue this January. To submit an article, please send an abstract, draft, and/or completed essay with full contact information to the editor-in-chief, Marc Jason Gilbert at mgilbert@hpu.edu. Book reviewers and those seeking Books Available for Review should direct their correspondence to the journal's Book Review Editor, Cynthia Ross at Cynthia.Ross@tamuc.edu.
Marc Jason Gilbert, PhD
Professor of History and
NEH-Supported Endowed Chair in World History
(2006-2019, Emeritus, 2020)
Editor, World History Connected (2008-)
Department of History, Humanities, and International Studies
College of Liberal Arts
Hawaii Pacific University
500 Ala Moana Boulevard, Suite 6-313,
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
Phone: 808.638.2563
E-mail: mgilbert@hpu.edu