In my presentation, I will tell a story about how, thirty years ago, in my history survey (or gateway courses as we call them now), I ditched an element of the course many consider indispensable: the standard history survey textbook. In place of a textbook, I began assigning students to read not one but two (or more) histories of the United States, written by different authors, with divergent points of view and ideological commitments, who disagree about what story to tell.
Back then, I was concerned that teaching with monovocal textbooks encourages students to believe deep misconceptions about historical knowledge: that history is “what happened,’ for example, or that “the Truth” about the past can be contained between the covers of a book. Now, as “the history wars” of the 1980s have been resumed by populist governors and state legislators stoking fears that campuses are hotbeds of liberal indoctrination, my practice of assigning secondary texts offering multiple points of view may have an additional purpose: providing political cover for history instructors who feel they need it.
My talk will address four questions: 1) How do I do it—teach American history with texts that offer divergent, even contradictory interpretations of the past? 2) How do students respond to this manner of learning history? 3) What evidence have I collected to document that teaching history “as an argument without end” nudges students toward a more sophisticated historical consciousness? 4) What political applications might all this have for the return of the History Wars?