Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Summer 2025 - HIST 472W D100

Problems in World History (4)

Teaching and Publishing History

Class Number: 2938

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    May 12 – Aug 8, 2025: Mon, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    45 units including nine units of lower division history.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An advanced examination into the concepts and methodology of world history. Selected themes may include globalization, modernization, migration, religious expansion, colonialism, imperialism, and the teaching of world history. Content may vary from offering to offering; see course outline for further information. HIST 472W may be repeated for credit only when a different topic is taught. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

This is a skill-oriented workshop-style course designed to benefit students anticipating or exploring careers involving the communication of historical knowledge (education, journalism, etc.).

            Half the course will be an opportunity for you to teach world history yourself. A series of discussions and projects will develop different aspects of your world-history pedagogical skills. You can choose the assignments' specific topics around a specific area of world history (e. g. imperialism, missions, immigration), or you can work on a variety of unrelated areas.  One motivation for offering this course is to exploit your best ideas to help in revising HIST 130, our first-year world-history survey, but you do not need to have taken that course previously to succeed in this one. Because teaching something is an excellent way of learning it, you should emerge from the workshop more knowledgeable about world history as well as more skilled in teaching it.

            The course’s other half will be an adventure in bringing an academic manuscript to publication. I’ll share a rough draft of my new book, a history of intellectual parody as a technique for opening up the mind.  Using provocative humour, scholars have raised questions that have shifted perspectives on major issues. Are Indigenous peoples trespassing on pre-colonial America?  Did American women in the 1950s ritualistically bake their heads in small ovens?  Is happiness a form of mental illness? This seminar invites you to kick the manuscript's tires, root around through its trunk, re-paint it, and drive it to unforeseen places.  We'll slowly read the manuscript over the semester, and you'll design and complete projects that either do further research on intellectual humour or improve (edit, illustrate, test pilot, criticize, market) my manuscript.  For more information see https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/desanctifying-scholarship/

Grading

  • Seminar attendance and participation 20%
  • Posting discussion questions 8%
  • Minor assignments (short written responses, oral presentation, prospectus) 24%
  • Research paper 48%

NOTES:

The minor assignments will be graded pass/almost/incomplete/fail.  For the minor assignments and research paper, you will have the option of revising and resubmitting to improve the grade.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

There’s no required textbook; readings will be made available online.  Students in the past have found useful Barbara Gross Davis’s Tools for Teaching (2009).


REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.

To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit: 


RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.