Narrative in a United States survey course is hard to avoid. The question that the author has confronted in his classes is simple: do narratives still work in the surveys now that students understand their subjectivity, in many cases, as much as their teachers? Students, like most humans, tend to like stories. As the humanities at large and…

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) is widely known as a champion for the political rights of African Americans, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), aggressive advocate of Pan-Africanism, staunch supporter of female suffrage, and one of the creative forces behind the Harlem Renaissance. Further still, Du…

An analysis of various points of controversy that has surrounded A.J.P. Taylor's Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961), an interpretation of the history of the inter-war years which has assumed such significance as to deserve designation as the Taylor Thesis.'' (JB)

Instant mass popularity of "Time on the Cross" as a technology-based re-evaluation of the slave system is traced; the furor it created in history and economics circles is described; and specific challenges which led to its demise as a credible document are related. (AV)

Questions assumptions of the New Historicism, a recent development in literary criticism. Suggests some problems that such an essentially political approach engenders. Includes lack of a common bond between author and reader, a universal model of historical change based upon the ideas of Marx and others, and contextualism. Argues that historians…

States that because historical novelists who wish to create lifelike characters and situations must base their work on accurate and thorough research, historical fiction can and should be used as another way of interpreting the past. Urges the critical analysis of historical fiction to make authors accountable for their work. (LS)

Reviews eight textbooks, readers, and books. Topics include Latin America, colonial America, the Carolinians, women in French textbooks, the Vikings, the Soviet Union, nineteenth-century Black America, and Ernest Rutherford. (TRS)