Group items tagged

Youtube Playlist Learn about the political, social, and economic changes in the Union and the Confederacy and the Civil War's long-term economic and intellectual impact. A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865 narrates the history of the American Civil War. While the course examines individual engagements and the overall nature of the military conflict, the focus is less on the battlefield than on political, social, and economic change in the Union and the Confederacy. Central to the account are the road to emancipation, the role of black soldiers, the nature of Abraham Lincoln's wartime leadership, internal dissent in both the North and South, the changing position of women in both societies, and the war's long-term economic and intellectual impact. We end with a look at the beginnings of Reconstruction during the conflict. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history - how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. See other courses in this series: The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850-1861 The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1865-1890 "The Civil War and Recons

Useful essay on what history is. Thanks Matt!

Yes it is a concise essay expressing complex changes very succinctly. The Website from which it comes looks very useful too. A number of Key historical topics and periods each with some original articles, book reviews, recommended websites etc. It is backed by the very reliable Institute of Historical Research see: http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/index.html

"Need I say more? We are that innovation! The human species was and is the 'ecological invention', the new 'natural technology', by which the biosphere saved itself! Those accumulations of photosynthetically useless carbon - initially the woody bodies of trees, and the corpses of other plants and animals, terrestrial and aquatic, as well as, later, coal, oil, and gas - entropy, waste, for photosynthesis - represent free energy for human praxis, that is, for that new form of 'synthetic' econo-ecological activity, biomass yielding and biomass sustaining, which is human industry and industrialized agriculture."

And so presumably once we've fulfilled our ecological function of redistributing this carbon back to the atmosphere we'll be superfluous and therefore annihilated, i.e. climate change will kill us off? I think these deniers should go back to the drawing board...

The Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History

Digitized versions of trade catalogs. Browse by company name, type of instrument, or category--acoustics, astronomy, balances, biology, chemistry, drawing instruments, education, electricity, engineering, geophysics, math, medical apparatus, meteorology, microscopy, natural history, natural philosophy, navigation, optics, photography, physics, spectroscopy, surveying. Images may be freely downloaded for personal, research and study purposes only; see the Permissions link forfurther details. Provided by the Smithsonian Institution

Kay - saw your post and thought you'd be interested in the new set of scientific teaching collection videos we've (NMAH) posted on YouTube. We are in the middle creating a website for these videos, and we'll be adding more over the next year or so. http://www.youtube.com/user/SmithsonianAmHistory?ob=0&feature=results_main

This narrative of the sectionalism and the growth of the Republican party is every bit as valid as the narrative canon, though its significantly different. The bullet point nature of this Twiiter thread and its natural inclusion of primary source documents makes this a strong candidate as the baseline reading assignment for US history students

" China is a majestic* country (note: links followed by * go to a dictionary definition) with a long and interesting history. If, like most people in the Occidental* world, you've never been to this fascinating land, you might want to take a brief tour. Go ahead and walk a few kilometers of The Great Wall or step foot into The Forbidden City or voyage to the Yellow Mountains. But beyond these tourist stops lives another, more complex, China. Currently, the people of China are experiencing great economic and social upheavals*. Such things as the situation in Tibet, Tiananmen Square massacre, and a scandal about treatment of orphans have brought some people to call for boycotts against China. Being faced with the task of understanding something as complex as a nation, you might want to give up. Sometimes in life you have that choice. But to give up trying to understand the China would mean giving up chances to benefit financially, to help people, to save some of the world's natural and artistic treasures, to protect the safety and security of millions of people, or to enlighten people's lives with greater religious insight. You see, you can't give up. So, if you're ready to begin, you might want to read a Travel Advisory before embarking* on our journey."

Teachers can use the information in this article to show students that primary sources can be just as slippery as secondary sources. For those who want to understand what the AMA's Tuning Project means by the "provisional nature of knowledge" - this is it.

I'm teaching historiography at the moment to my students. Yet again the Sourcebooks come to the rescue. Where would we be without them?

The comprehensive virtual tour allows the visitor to take a virtual, self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum. The visitor can navigate from room to room either by using a floor map or by following blue arrow links connecting the rooms. Camera icons indicate hotspots where the visitor can get a close-up on a particular object or exhibit panel.

The comprehensive virtual tour allows the visitor to take a virtual, self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum. The visitor can navigate from room to room either by using a floor map or by following blue arrow links connecting the rooms. Camera icons indicate hotspots where the visitor can get a close-up on a particular object or exhibit panel.

Interesting web-based simulation of natural disasters. Students are expected to problem solve how to deal with prepping for a specific disaster with a limited budget. Obvious application in Geography classes but also could be used in History when looking at a specific disaster in history like Hurricane Katrina.

"The collection's 976 scientific drawings consist of 518 watercolor and/or pencil drawings of fishes and miscellaneous vertebrates and invertebrates, together with the original color drawings ultimately adapted on stone by lithographer A. Sonrel "

A collection of source materials produced by a scientific expedition to Brazil in the mid-nineteenth century.

Free resource - how to analyse political cartoons - brilliant

Another of the excellent sourcebooks run by those Jesuits at Fordham Uni. This is the best online primary source research for the ancient world I've found.