World Teach

Teaching the French Revolution?  Was it just ten years of senseless killing? That's what columnist Peggy Noonan suggested in a recent essay for the Wall Street Jornal . Two historians, Mike Duncan, a revolutionary history podcaster, and David A. Bell, a history professor at Princeton, took Noonan to task on Twitter for not knowing her history. Both historians suggest that the revolution, while horrifically violent, made significant contributions to the world. Here are links to PDF's of Duncan's and Bell's twitter threads about Noonan's essay. Bell reminds of the development of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the abolition of slavery throughout the empire, the abolishment of the noble class, and the right to vote for adult men. And Professor Duncan analyzes every sentence in Noonan's essay.

Here is an amazing 3D model of an 18th-century slave ship called the Aurore. Researchers from Emory University worked with Dr. Nicholas Radburn, the co-editor of the " Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database ," to develop the 3D model. The Aurore left La Rochelle in France in August 1784 bound for the African coast to buy slaves to work in sugar and coffee plantations in Santa Domingue. The 3d model is based on a set of existing slave ship plans. The result is an amazing 4-minute review of the horrors of a slave ship.

If you teach world history, keep your eyes out for the August 18th edition of the New York Times Magazine. According to the twitter thread below, the Times will publish a special digital section about that fateful year and its legacy. You can see below the list of historians who will be contributing. Here's the link on twitter . Thread by @nhannahjones: "So, here it is. If you follow me on here, if you know me in real life, then you know I'm obsessed with the year 1619 & how the start of […]" #1619Project #project1619

Teaching Hinduism?  Think about beginning the unit with this awesome creation story. Hinduism has many creation stories. That's because Hindus believe there is no single creation but rather cycles of creation.  Here, Gillian Anderson narrates our creation story for BBC Radio 4.

Long before Classical Greeks like Pythagoras, Babylonians in the first millennium BCE were making revolutionary observations about the universe, according to a review of cuneiform tablets by Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid. ‏ Dr. Al-Rashid notes that between 2000 and 1600BCE, Babylonians "began systematically to record celestial phenomena and their related terrestrial events."  Some of the tablets, she notes, record "daily astronomical observations in detail, like the position of the moon, occurrences of eclipses, and the location of planets in the sky."  The takeaway from all this, at least from a world history point of view, is that astronomy and math did not begin with Classical Greece. As Dr. Al-Rashid notes Thread by @Moudhy: "I opened a lecture on the history of astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia today by acknowledging that cuneiform tablets, to an untrained eye, ca […]"

Did civilization arise before religion or did religion arise before civilization? History books teach us that civilization arose with the Neolithic Revolution when hunter-gatherers first settled down because of the discovery of agriculture.  Settled life then led to cities, writing, and religion. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey several years ago may change that story. Göbekli Tepe contains a series of circles with limestone pillars carved with bas-reliefs of animals like gazelles, foxes, and wild boar. The tallest pillars are 18 feet high and weigh 16 tons.  It looks like a temple "reminiscent of Stonehenge," according to the National Geographic. But Göbekli Tepe is much older than Stonehenge and over seven thousand years older than the Pyramid at Giza. It was built before the Neolithic Revolution, 11,600 years ago. As the New Yorker Magazine noted, most historians believe that hunter-gatherers did not have the "complex symbolic systems, social hie...

Teaching Zoroastrianism?  Here' s a fascinating essay that outlines its influence today! Which religion influenced the beliefs of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism? Monotheism started with its founder long before Abraham. The idea of heaven and hell originated with it, as did the idea of good and evil. Not only did its ideas influence the Abrahamic religions, but they also influenced culture. Richard Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"  can be seen in the score of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Freddy Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, got inspiration from the religion's founder and the Mazda car maker takes its name from the founder. Zoroastrianism started in Iran and grew with the three great Iranian empires which included that of Cyrus the Great, but began to weaken after the invasion of Alexander the Great and the later development of Islam. Many Zoroastrians fled and migrated to India where they became known as Parsis. In a terrific essay for BBC Cult...

Wikipedia Commons Here's an interesting essay that reminds us why we should study Chinese philosophy Most American know little about Chinese philosophy. They know little beyond the idea that Confucianism is based on five relationships and Daoism has something to do with nature. In addition, few philosophy departments in the top universities even have a regular faculty member who teaches Chinese philosophy.  Of course, you can find a lot of Greek philosophy. But, according to Bryan W. Van Norden, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College, understanding Chinese thought is a matter of urgency.  He outlines three reasons in a terrific essay for The Conversation called,  Why the US doesn’t understand Chinese thought – and must. China's economy could become the largest in the world by 2030. We should understand the philosophical and religious framework of a country with so much influence  because, notes Professor Norden, "traditional philosophy is of con...