Edited by Jeanne E. Grant
It was a pleasure to read Professor Lockard's essay and reflect on the central points of his "last lecture," Crossing Borders: Disciplines, Cultures, and Histories. It is wonderful that Paul Jentz and Liang Hong-Ming decided to request responses to Lockard's piece for inclusion in the first volume of The Middle Ground. I am at present on a plane returning home from the 2010 WHA Conference in San Diego. While there, I was reminded of the need for ongoing and genuine dialogue among world historians. Ours is a continually evolving and incredibly challenging field - my writing here will be in the spirit of reflective dialogue.
I was drawn to world history as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota where I had the great fortune of working with a professor who, like Craig Lockard, had waded bravely into its deep waters. Professor Edward L. Farmer was an early innovator in the realm of comparative approaches to studying and teaching world history. I am forever indebted to Ted for his willingness to work with me as I engaged with China's modern history and studied pedagogical approaches to world history.
Professor Lockard stresses the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. His points on the need for more "problem-focused programs" such as global studies and international development are well taken. It is interesting to witness a continued emphasis on narrow specialization within the academy, at a time when a broadening of horizons would seem more apt for this twenty-first-century world. In fact, history as a discipline includes such broad areas of specialization that world history requires a crossing of more traditional "fields" before one even reaches the border. Asianists must leave late imperial China and venture west to explore Africa, Americanists must remove themselves from the relatively safe confines of Frederick Turner's "frontier thesis" and sail out intellectually across intrepid seas. I am happy to report that this crossing of borders within the discipline seems more and more common. The good news is this: the challenges of stepping out of one's academic comfort zone are closely paralleled by the rewards of a broader, global knowledge. As a teacher, it is a must if one is to produce informed curriculum in world history.
I have always found the general lack of interest in international experience among the American populace to be strange and maddening. One of the wealthiest societies (and thus most able to travel abroad) in the history of humankind seems to have little interest, in general, in getting out into the world and engaging with other cultures. I have long since likened this to the attitudes of Roman citizens at the height of their empire. Why should a Roman or an American bother to venture far from the center of all that is the best the world has to offer? All we can do is encourage travel among our students and every semester I joke with incoming students that they really ought to get a refund on their tuition, take a semester or a year off from their studies, and go abroad for as long as they possibly can. I took a year off from my studies between my sophomore and junior year and spent three months travelling Europe on a Eurail pass. The experience changed my life and sparked an interest in the world that remains within me to this day. I will keep encouraging my students to go abroad and stress that it could be the most important thing they ever choose to do. I will also continue to organize educational travel opportunities for students. I am a big believer in the two to three week tour, especially if it is preceded by a meaningful, introductory, semester-long course on the target country or region. I taught a course on modern China a few years back and then led students on an eighteen-day visit to the country. I have plans to do so again in 2012 at Lake Superior College. Lockard comments that time abroad is becoming much more cost prohibitive for many students than it was in the past. I agree and feel that shorter term, less expensive alternatives can still offer meaningful experiences. They can also plant the seeds for future travel and study abroad of longer duration, or perhaps even a stint in the Peace Corps, which is alive and well.
I have been a student of what Lockard refers to as "the many foreign policy blunders that America has made" for more than twenty years now. The author makes some good points when comparing the lack of necessary knowledge when planning the invasion of Iraq to the massive missteps in Vietnam. Over the many years of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, I have witnessed a sort of patriarchal relationship between the American political and military leaders and their Afghan/Iraqi counterparts. U.S. leaders have more often than not taken on a neo-colonial attitude - treating the others as children in need of guidance, just as former colonial masters once treated their subjects. I wish more of my students would show interest in developing the critical thinking skills necessary to better understand American foreign policy and the U.S.'s changing status in the world. In my mind, the closest parallel between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War is the fact that the U.S. took it upon itself to intervene in these regions in an arrogant effort to impose its own vision on the world. However noble or ignoble American intentions, the mid to long term prospects for success and stability in Iraq or Afghanistan are far from certain. If foreign policy blunders are to occur in the future, let them at very least be collective in nature, rather than largely unilateral and American, as one finds in the Iraq War.
A better informed American citizenry might, or might not, have understood the complex dynamics between Iraq, the Arab world, the US, and the international community in the decades, years leading up to the invasion. Unfortunately, the recent past in world history, the contemporary period from World War II to the present, is often left out of World History II surveys for lack of time. I encounter this end-of-the-semester time constraint with consistent regularity in my World II courses. If you think about it - this means that our students rarely learn about centrally important matters over the past five or six decades that have contributed directly toward the making of their world today. Some colleges and universities, including the University of Minnesota, have divided their world history curriculum into three courses: the ancient/pre-modern world, the modern world, and the contemporary world. The third course (1950 to present) in this sequence offers a great opportunity to enlighten students regarding the forces that have shaped their world today. Professor Farmer has a roundtable planned on this topic for the first MWWHA conference in Chicago this fall. I plan to be a participant in that discussion and look forward to exploring this issue further at that time.
I share Craig Lockard's lament over the lack of world news coverage in the most viewed, mainstream American media. I find myself frustrated time and again as I surf the cable channels in search of anything international. There is very little there outside the wonderful programming on PBS and the travel/food programs such as Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. I joke with my students regularly about PBS - the fact is that the great majority of them have not tuned into public broadcasting since they were children watching Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer. Ironically, while Americans are finding less and less coverage of their world, I found a vast amount of world coverage while visiting my wife's family last year in Morocco. Does it make sense that a "developing world" country like Morocco would offer infinitely more international programming to its citizens (albeit through satellite dish) than the world's sole mega-power? In fact, it does. If American viewers watched more international programming, then American media companies would offer more. They do not. Once again, this seems to smack of the ancient Roman attitude - why in the world would an American need to look outside of this twenty-first century paradise? Perhaps I am being too harsh here, but I sense the comparative point will not be lost. Ironically, there has been a precipitous rise in the amount of international programming out there at the same time that American viewers seem less and less interested, and Lockard points out that many of the major American media outlets are closing down their foreign bureaus. I will try to remain hopeful that, as Americans are confronted ever more clearly with what Fareed Zakaria refers to as a "post-American world," they will wake up in ever greater numbers to the need for greater knowledge of other peoples and places.
"It's your world - know it!" This is my message to incoming students of world history each and every semester, and map assignments are a regular feature as required work for the courses. Like so many other good ideas for assignments, I stole this one from someone else (Ted Farmer) who had already incorporated it into his curriculum. Most college students have not encountered a map assignment since middle school and at first glance it can seem a bit below college-level studies. In fact, it requires many laborious hours of looking geographical features and historical subject matter up in atlases and the textbook to place them correctly on a world map template. Students always complain at first, but many of them thank me later for the experience. Therefore, in response to Craig Lockard's call for a non-invasion policy toward "any country that a majority of adult Americans cannot locate on a map," I will continue to work hard to improve the geographic literacy of my students, but we need not worry much about a sudden blossoming of map savvy among average American citizens.
The phenomenal explosion of global connections over recent decades is changing the world in which we live. Professor Lockard's Flamenco enthusiasts in Japan offer a great example of how global culture can arrive on one's doorstep without ever leaving home. Hip-Hop music, like it or not, for better or worse, is now the music of the world. As I write this piece, there is a Mexican hip-hop artist rapping on Public Radio International's program, "The World." One can easily find hip-hop in Arabic, Mandarin, French, Russian, and even in Malay. I don't know if this is "global fusion," but I do not sense that it exemplifies a "cultural imperialism" of the West. It would seem to me that in this age of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and related technologies all around the world - it is increasingly difficult for Western culture, or any other culture for that matter, to control the media or the message.
In closing, we can all thank Craig Lockard and his many colleagues in the World History Association (WHA) for their passion, vision, and hard work. The WHA has served as a catalyst behind the legitimization and spread of this special field. I had the pleasure of attending a talk in San Diego about a documentary that Professor Andrew Darien (Salem State College) put together from interviews he had compiled during last year's WHA conference in Salem, Massachusetts. It was a pleasure to hear these historians, many of whom were present at the creation-so to speak, explain their views on the evolution of the field. The future looks bright as a younger generation of historians continues this good work. The Midwest World History Association (MWWHA) has already begun to attract the attention of educators, scholars, and students in this region. The work of advancing the cause of world history education and scholarship is an interest that we all share. The study of world history and diffusion of knowledge about the making of this diverse, pulsating, modern world is now more relevant than ever before. It is our challenge as educators to bring this history alive for our students and impart upon them, to the extent possible, a true appreciation of how knowledge of the global past can truly enrich their lives in this global present.