History Commons^™

Connecting Literature And History: Fitzgerald’S The Great Gatsby Museum Project, Adam Kotlarczyk

The Great Gatsby Unit

Despite mixed reviews at the time of its 1925 publication, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has come to be one of the most widely taught American books and has become a popular candidate for the title of the “Great American Novel.” Uniquely intertwining social history, biography, and literature, the text challenges readers to understand the culture and history of the Jazz Age and to see its interrelationship with the lives and motivations of the characters, as well as with the author himself. This project encourages students to engage and work closely with one of the historical elements that influenced …

Session D-1: African Muslims And The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Steven Buenning

Professional Learning Day

African Muslims played central roles in the largest forced migration in human history; the transatlantic slave trade. This presentation employs primary sources from the online collection of the National Humanities Center and from the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (Emory University). Participants will engage in close reading of two memoirs of Muslim slaves, as well as three newspaper articles written in 1828. In addition, participants will receive geography exercises. A Powerpoint and a full list of helpful resources are included.

Session C-4: Common Core Standards In The Ninth Grade History Curriculum: First Steps, Jessica Greenberg

Professional Learning Day

This session will focus on incorporating the Common Core standards into the ninth grade World History curriculum. Challenges surrounding this task will be addressed. These include: getting unmotivated students to engage with more text inside and outside of the classroom, addressing the Common Core reading standards without normed reading assessments to determine growth, and teaching the Common Core persuasive writing standards to students who are not ready to write five paragraph essays. Through a discussion of research-based strategies and actual examples of activities and assignments, this presentation describes first steps any teacher can take to begin the process of incorporating …

Session A-3: Across The Wide Missouri: Illinois & Early Exploration Of The Trans-Mississippi West, Claiborne A. Skinner Jr.

Professional Learning Day

Illinois History is often perceived as a contradiction in terms. Until the arrival of Abraham Lincoln, most folks think that nothing of any note happened here. This presentation will address the French traders and explorers from the Illinois Country who pushed west up the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers in the century preceding Lewis and Clark's more famous jaunt. The two knew of these French travelers only too well and recruited a half dozen Illinois French at Fort Massac and Kaskaskia to show them how to get to the "unknown". The effect these men had on the Plains was profound.

Session A-2: Lincoln And Douglas: The Debates, The Background And Why What You Say Matters, Lee Eysturlid

Professional Learning Day

This presentation will get at the important meanings and usages of the famous debates for the Senate that took place between Lincoln and Douglas in the state of Illinois. Attendees will gain a working knowledge of the event and explore ways to make use of it in class. Finally, the session will align the materials presented with the Common Core standards dealing with the "integration of knowledge and ideas" as well as "reading and writing for literacy".

Session A-4: National Archives Resources And The Common Core, Kris Maldre Jarosik

Professional Learning Day

Discover the online resources of the National Archives and learn how they can support Common Core standards and help build the literacy skills of your students. We will explore sample U.S. history activities relating to the Civil War, American Indians, and World War II during this session.

Philosophers Of War: The Evolution Of History's Greatest Military Thinkers, Daniel Coetzee, Lee Eysturlid

Faculty Publications & Research

The philosophy of war is usually treated in the context of philosophy as a discipline in the same way military justice is compared to justice, and military music to music. That is to say, it is presented as a red-headed stepchild at best or, more likely, as an illegitimate offspring, Carl von Clausewitz, the West's defining military philosopher and its most familiar figure, barely rates a footnote and an index entry in general histories of philosophy—even those with a German emphasis.

The same point can be made about military thought. Theoretical analysis of war is commonly understood in practical contexts: …