Course Description

Instructor: Dan Zins, PhD American Studies

“The one responsibility we have to history is to rewrite it.� --Oscar Wilde "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four My title, of course, is shamelessly purloined from James Loewen’s book on the miseducation of students in high school history courses. Please be sure to get the revised (2007) version of Loewen’s book (you can find out more about this text on amazon). In the spirit of Benedetto Croce’s dictum that “all history is contemporary history,� this class will explore the shortcomings, cultural context, politics, and ideology of history teaching and historical memory as reflected in the current state of our nation. The course will be a dialogue/discussion format. Please read the introduction and first chapter of Loewen’s book for our initial meeting. Below are the kinds of questions and concerns (time permitting) that will inform this course: Do you find James Loewen to be a reliable, fair-minded, and trustworthy guide as he narrates his critique? “Cry the Beloved Country�: What specific role has the (mis)teaching of history played in how we view some of our most contentious contemporary issues, and the state of our nation in 2017? How has history traditionally been taught, and who benefits and who loses from this (typically uncritical and unreflective) pedagogy? Documents and false documents bias, objectivity, and the “politics of history.� The responsibility of historians: what should historians do--and avoid--as they practice their craft? History, narrative, myth, truth, lies, alternative facts, and novelists as historians history “from the bottom up.� The history of the Cold War and McCarthyism: what are the lessons, and how well have they been learned? The missing history of the nuclear age: a tale of censorship, secrecy, lying, self-deception, and denia.l “Overthrow�: the unacknowledged history of a century of U.S. regime change. What exactly is “revisionist history,� and how is this term typically employed, and by whom, and for what purposes? Political/patriotic/economic correctness and history. History teaching and the ongoing war against education. Banning Howard Zinn (redux)--or, how to make American history great again. What happened at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in 1995, and why was this allowed to happen? The battle over Christopher Columbus and his legacy. “The Wages of Guilt�: how effectively have Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union dealt with the darkest aspects of their national pasts? Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, slavery, and the historians. Lynne Cheney, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the fierce battle over National History Standards What should we tell our children about Vietnam? 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq: what are the lessons, and will history teachers help us to learn them?