Welcome to the web page for the American Historical Association roundtable discussion "The Atlantic World:  Emerging Themes in a New Teaching Field."

This panel is cosponsored by the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI), an AHA-affiliated society.

The panel is scheduled for Sunday, January 9, 2000, at 11 a.m., at the Marriott Hotel, Chicago Ballroom Salon D.

Our panel proposal explains the rationale for this discussion, as well as the contribution that each participant will make:

SUMMARY OF THE PANEL THEME

The 1990s have seen the emergence of Atlantic history as an ever more popular interpretive framework in which to understand early modern history in the western hemisphere. More than a handful of history departments in the United States and Europe now offer some version of a Ph.D. in Atlantic history. At least one professional organization, the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI), has been formed in the 1990s to promote Atlantic history (as well as European expansion into Asia). And the Mellon Foundation has recently renewed its funding for Harvard University's International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether this trend will flourish into the twenty-first century or perish as yet another historiographical fad. Will the field solidify and be widely recognized as indispensable, and will more and more history departments advertise positions in the Atlantic world and offer undergraduate and graduate courses on the Atlantic world? Whatever the outcome may be, we believe that the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in 2000, on the cusp of the next millennium and with the theme of "History for the Twenty-First Century," offers an excellent opportunity to discuss with a wide audience the emerging field of the Atlantic world, particularly in terms of its teaching potential, but also as a research field.

All the participants in this roundtable discussion are proponents of the Atlantic world as a teaching model and research area that liberates historians and their students from narrower views of the past and raises exciting issues about the interconnectedness of Africans, Americans, and Europeans since 1492. All of us have classroom experience teaching courses with the Atlantic world as a theme, yet we come from four continents of specialization with an even wider variety of research interests. As practitioners of Atlantic history, the panelists will explain the challenges and advantages of using the Atlantic world as an interpretive device. While proponents all, we are also candid about the difficulties of reshaping curricula to include the Atlantic world and of teaching courses that cover more ground (and water) than existing courses that teach history based on current national boundaries.

The chair will strictly limit each presentation to ten minutes. Since syllabi will be distributed in advance through a web site and in a packet at the session itself, the presentations need not be longer. Six presenters are necessary, however, to represent the geographical components of the Atlantic world and the perspective of teachers at two-year, four-year, and graduate institutions. Bernard Bailyn will respond to the presentations, then at least forty-five minutes will remain for discussion with the audience. FEEGI, an AHA-affiliated society, has agreed to co-sponsor this panel if it is approved.

STATEMENT ON TEACHING

History teaching in the twenty-first century seems destined to be more globally oriented, yet the majority of historians will likely be trained in programs that continue to use national or continental paradigms that have dominated our organization of the past. As our title asks, is the Atlantic world a teaching model that will survive, or is it a passing fad in the rush to globalize the curriculum in departments with few, if any, historians trained in world history? Just how can a Latin Americanist, for instance, profit from an Atlantic perspective, and what might a history course with this perspective look like?

The panelists in this roundtable discussion are all teachers of Atlantic history. Though trained in narrower fields, they have all committed to teaching courses that cross the ocean and modern political borders. Their primary goal is to share information about the courses they teach with members of the audience and to continue the dialogue about the usefulness of the Atlantic world model in history teaching. Thus, every Atlantic continental perspective is represented, as is every level of college teaching, from two-year to graduate institutions. The panelists will address such questions as:

1. What is Atlantic history? Is it a field in itself?

2. How can the interpretive framework of the Atlantic world improve American history surveys, other introductory courses, and upper-division and graduate courses in African, European, Latin American, and North American history?

3. What themes or issues give coherence and utility to the Atlantic world, and how can historians trained in one continental area hope to master these themes and issues?

4. What practical advice can you give if I decide to teach a course with an Atlantic perspective?

5. What is the future of graduate programs in Atlantic history?

An unusual feature of this panel, should it be approved, will be the posting of syllabi on a web site (either the chair's or the web site for Harvard's International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World) in advance, with the address printed in the meeting program, so that those who wish to attend can view the courses that will be discussed and those who are unable to attend can still benefit from the panel. Copies of the syllabi will also be distributed at the discussion itself. Institutions with graduate programs in Atlantic history will also be contacted and invited to distribute information about their programs to the audience.

In these ways, we believe, a two-hour discussion can have a considerable, far-reaching impact for those teachers in attendance as well as those who visit the web site from remote locations.

ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

• Alison Games, Georgetown University, "Atlantic History As an Introductory Survey Course": In the fall of 1998, students enrolled in Georgetown University's College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business, and School of Foreign Languages and Linguistics were able to fulfill their general education history requirement for the first time with a course other than a full year of European history. One option to fill half the requirement was a one-semester survey class on the Atlantic world from 1492 to 1800. Professor Games proposed and taught this freshman survey class. Her contribution to the roundtable discussion, then, will be to talk specifically about teaching Atlantic history as an introductory survey, in a large lecture course. She will talk about teaching Atlantic history in both theory and practice, given the constraints of synthesizing the four continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean for a bright student population unfamiliar with many aspects of the histories contained within the Atlantic world in the early modern period. As Atlantic history is "history without borders," a story told from no one vantage point and about no single representative place, it can be particularly confusing to undergraduates–no nation states, no single narrative, but instead multiple and often conflicting narratives presented from different perspectives. By the end of the semester her students were able to discern patterns within the Atlantic world, to assess the experiences of the different populations contained therein, and to explain important transformations within the Atlantic. She hopes to share this experience at our roundtable and to argue that Atlantic history is far from a fad but rather a way of organizing the most logical unit of analysis if we are able to begin to comprehend the variables shaping, creating, defining, sabotaging, and destroying people and cultures in the four continents of the Atlantic world.

• Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington, "The Atlantic World from Europe": Atlantic world history? North Atlantic world history? Anglo-American history with an interest in slavery or native contacts? As a Europeanist, American colonial history has always looked like Atlantic world history to Professor Schmidt, who teaches undergraduate courses and advises graduate students interested in the Atlantic world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This has worked better, in fact, with students who tend to have a more relaxed view of historiographic boundaries than program coordinators or even colleagues. In his teaching, Schmidt has sought to introduce the variety of European, African, and American voices to the discussion. In his research in Dutch history, he has tried to assert a more broadly European perspective to the largely English or Spanish versions of encounter. He will discuss a large lecture course that he is now developing on the Atlantic world, which he may offer in tandem with a Pacific world course, as an alternative to the Western civilization sequence.

• Rosemary Brana-Shute, College of Charleston, "The Atlantic World from Latin America":  Professor Brana-Shute (co-associate director of the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World at her institution) came to the Atlantic world from several directions in her graduate training: African history, early modern Europe, Latin American literature, and Caribbean history. She now teaches a two-semester course in Caribbean history (early to present), team teaches with an archaeologist "pre-Atlantic history" (Aztecs, Mayas, and their ancestors), and is developing new courses called "Pirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic World," "Women in Latin American History," and "Comparative Slave Systems." From these many experiences in the classroom, Professor Brana-Shute will make several assertions about what the Atlantic world means to her. First, even Peru is part of the Atlantic world; membership does not depend on Atlantic beach-front property, but rather on the colonial conquest and subsequent integration into Spain's imperial economy. Second, although the "documented" Atlantic world was initially born with European exploration and conquest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the study of the Atlantic world is not the study of European expansion. Third, although it is easier for some to perceive an Atlantic world when studying the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, teaching an Atlantic world should not stop with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Some topics that are "Atlantic" and which can be fruitfully explored with students are the Pan-African movement, revolutions, Christianity and Islam, nationalism, and migration. The Atlantic has become something of an echo chamber–cultural developments, in particular, resonate; think of music, how global, how African and Caribbean it has become as a result of the echoes, the ongoing conversation artists have with each other. This is the Atlantic world.

• John Thornton, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, "The Atlantic World from Africa":  As the author of Africa and Africans in the Making of the Americas, Professor Thornton is widely known for his research in Atlantic history from the starting point of Africa. Less known are his teaching efforts at Millersville, where he offers courses in Atlantic and African history. He will explain the nexus between his teaching and current research into recovering African identities in the Americas, which until now have remained largely undifferentiated in American history. Unraveling how language came to be a means of identity in America when it was not so in Africa--what sort of solidarity Africans built with those from the same language group--is a challenge historians are working on at the present. The role of the "nation" or "country" as a social group among Africans, and its gradual disappearance as second and third generation African Americans abandoned their languages in favor of colonial languages and devoted attention to family rather than countryman, is becoming clear. This topic exemplifies the ability of an Atlantic perspective to bring together divergent trends in the African diaspora and to show students the diversity of African experiences in the Atlantic world.

• Hal Friedman, Henry Ford Community College, "The Atlantic World at Community Colleges":  Atlantic history as an American survey course for the community college is a wonderful idea, Dr. Friedman believes. It would force history instructors to divide the American survey into three segments, with the Atlantic world ending between 1763 and 1800, the middle segment ending in either 1877 or 1900, and the last covering the twentieth century. While he is in principle opposed to this kind of division because of a tendency to give too much attention to post-Civil War history, such a division would allow history instructors to give more thorough treatment to the colonial period and not feel the need to "rush to the Revolution." Most important for this panel, however, is that instructors from four-year institutions realize that they are driving the agenda. Community colleges can only create new survey courses when they know that the courses are up and running at four-year institutions and that those colleges will accept the courses from transferring students. Until Atlantic history is fully accepted at the four-year schools as a new but standard freshman survey course, community college instructors can only watch and cheer from the sidelines.

• David Armitage, Columbia University, "The Atlantic World As a Graduate Field": There are three kinds of Atlantic history, Professor Armitage believes: circum-Atlantic, trans-Atlantic, and cis-Atlantic. He will explain the meaning of each and explore the differences in relation to teaching and research about the Atlantic world. As a co-teacher of a graduate colloquium (with North Americanist Richard Bushman) in British and American history, 1600-1765, Armitage has taught graduate students the histories of early modern Britain and early America viewed as an integrated subject. He will discuss the ways in which he urges graduate students to view topics such as slavery and race, labor, the economy, imperial government, religion, and landscapes from an Atlantic perspective, and the successes and disappointments he has had in doing so.

• Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University, Commentator: Professor Bailyn, a former president of the AHA, Adams University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, and director of the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, is eminently qualified, both from his own research and from his direction of three Atlantic World Seminars (with more to come), to speak to the topic and to respond to the presentations.

As promised, we will distribute sample syllabi during the discussion on January 9.  For a preview, click on the names of the participants below.  You are welcome to copy and print any syllabus you wish, giving credit where credit is due, of course.

Alison Games, Georgetown University, "The Atlantic World as an Introductory Survey Course"

Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington, "The Atlantic World from Europe"

Rosemary Brana-Shute, College of Charleston, "The Atlantic World from Latin America" [syllabus not available]

John Thornton, Millersville University, "The Atlantic World from Africa" [syllabus not available]

Hal Friedman, Henry Ford Community College, "The Atlantic World at Community Colleges"

David Armitage, Columbia University, "The Atlantic World as a Graduate Field"

If you are interested in this roundtable discussion, you may wish to visit the website of Harvard University's International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800.

Thank you for your interest.  If you wish to contact the chair of the panel and author of this page, please feel free to do so:  Jim Williams at Middle Tennessee State University.

This page was created on October 12, 1999.