A Companion to World History

  A Companion to World History offers a comprehensive overview of the variety of approaches and practices utilized in the field of world and global history. This state–of–the–art collection of more than 30 insightful essays – including contributions from an international cast of leading world historians and emerging scholars in the field – identifies continuing areas of contention, disagreement, and divergence in the field, while pointing out fruitful directions for further discussion and research. Themes and topics explored include trajectories and the practice of world history, key ideas of world historians, the teaching of world history and how it has drawn upon and challenged "traditional" teaching approaches, global approaches to writing world history, and precisely what is at stake in world history. By considering issues of both scholarship and pedagogy from a transnational, interregional, and world/global scale, a startling amount of fresh insights are gained and new challenges posed. With its rich collection of global viewpoints, A Companion to World History is an essential resource for the study of the world′s past.

Douglas Northrop is Professor of History and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. His first book, Veiled Empire : Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (2004), won the W. Bruce Lincoln Prize and the Heldt Prize.

“This new volume offers insightful reflections by both leading and emerging world historians on approaches, methodologies, arguments, and pedagogies of a sub–discipline that has continued to be in flux as well as in need of defining itself as a relevant alternative to the traditional national, regional, or chronological fields of inquiry” (Choice) "The focus...on the practicalities of how to do world history probably gives it its edge. Its thirty–three chapters are grouped into sections that address how to set up research projects in world history, how to teach it, how to get jobs in it, how to frame it, and how it is done in various parts of the globe. It is an actual handbook, in other words, as opposed to a sample of exemplary work." (English Historical Review)