Spring 2014 GSC Newsletter

GSC and the World History Center Celebrate Five-Year Collaboration

By Patrick Manning


Patrick Manning

Patrick Manning

The World History Center, founded in 2008, emphasizes research, teaching, and international collaboration on the global past, with attention to policies for the global future. It draws on the Pitt History Department’s long tradition of leadership in social history and takes social history in new directions. In its current stage, the Center focuses especially on development of graduate study in world history, both through a collaborative annual World History Dissertation Workshop and through the development of doctoral specialization in world history linked to other aspects of the History Ph.D. at Pitt. In addition, the Center emphasizes global historical research, the establishment of global institutions and collaborations for historical study, the creation of a strong undergraduate program in world history, and programs for raising the standards of world-historical instruction in middle schools and secondary schools.

The center is directed by Patrick Manning, known as a founding figure in the study of world history and especially for his 2003 overview of the field, for pathbreaking works on migration and diasporas, for his leadership in establishing programs of graduate study and international collaborations among world historians, and most recently for research on creating a world-historical archive. Associate director of the center is Diego Holstein, a leader in explaining the linkages of the various subfields of world history who is also conducting research on global interactions in twentieth-century politics. Assistant professor Molly Warsh brings strength in study of early modern Iberian and British empires and their place in global political economy. Several other participating members of the Department of History, three postdoctoral fellows in world history, visiting scholars, and nearly a dozen graduate students fill out the complement of the Center. These participants share an active program of seminar presentations, research awards, and publication.

The World History Center and the Global Studies Center formed a partnership in 2008, and it has deepened steadily with time. For the World History Center, it is of great benefit to be linked to the interdisciplinary scholarship and the contemporary concerns of Global Studies. For the Global Studies Center, a focus on the historical dimensions of contemporary global issues strengthens the understanding of global change; this alliance distinguishes the GSC at Pitt from other global studies centers that focus on current affairs with little attention to change over time. Collaboration of the two centers has made itself felt in the development of global academic institutions, support for outreach and advance in secondary education, collaborative research at Pitt, undergraduate education, and graduate education. Following are some of the details of these collaborative activities.

First, regarding global academic institutions, the two centers have held a joint membership in the worldwide Global Studies Consortium since 2010, and are making a bid to host the international Global Studies Consortium conference in 2016: this expanding international group links universities around the world that support graduate-level global studies programs.  Second, the two centers are collaborating in hosting the fifth Flying University in Transnational Humanities (FUTH), an international summer school bringing major scholars to lecture and mentor the work of graduate students and young scholars. (It has previously been held at Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea, and at the University of Leipzig in Germany.) The 2014 meeting, to be held at Pitt on June 23-27, 2014, focuses on the theme of “Globalization East: Society and Culture.” A further dimension of the FUTH conference is that, of the expected 35 participants, roughly 15 will also be participating in a reunion of those who earlier took part in World History Dissertation Workshops at the World History Center. These students and young scholars are associated with the Network of Global and World History Organizations (NOGWHISTO‎), with affiliates on five continents.

Third, and for the advance of secondary education, the two centers form a key element in the Alliance for Learning in World History, funded for 2012-2013 by the Social Science Research Council and the British Council as part of a national initiative on “Our Shared Past.” The two centers, along with the Pitt School of Education, have linked with units at UCLA and Cal State Long Beach to establish a national program setting standards for curriculum, professional development, and research in the teaching of world history, with a website and a program of consulting that is to be made public in November, 2013.

Fourth, the two centers participate in efforts to expand collaborative research across disciplinary lines at the University of Pittsburgh. One such research initiative is the Collaborative for Historical Information and Analysis, in which participants from numerous units at the university, with major funding from the National Science Foundation, work together in creating a world-historical archive to house cross-disciplinary data for the past four centuries. A second research initiative is in the field of public health, in which both Global Studies Center and World History Center have set up close relations with the university’s highly regarded School of Public Health and Center for Global Health. In a third initiative, the two centers have collaborated with the Humanities Center to convene one-day conferences in 2012 and 2013, initially linking literature and world history, then subsequently linking visual art and world history: such cross-disciplinary discussions are expected to continue.

A final and essential arena of collaboration is in university curriculum. In undergraduate education, the Global Studies Certificate and the World History Concentration within the History major are becoming steadily more closely linked. If current plans are implemented, the Global Studies Certificate will require the world history survey course and the World History Concentration will require courses drawn from the Global Studies curriculum. At the graduate level, the process has developed further: an advanced course in Interdisciplinary Methodology, open to students throughout the university, has been taught by Prof. Manning in 2011 and 2013, and was supported by Global Studies in 2013. In 2015 the course will be required for graduate students in world history. This course can be considered a step in the direction of formal university support for interdisciplinary study at the graduate level. It reaffirms the basic objective of the collaboration of the World History Center and the Global Studies Center: to advance multidisciplinary analysis at the global level, with attention to change over time. 

 

 

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