Teaching The World Civilization Survey

A Spherical Approach

Abstract

It appears that my situation is not untypical of many who have been involved with the dilemma of how best to structure and teach the World Civ Survey from an academic background that included almost no training in non-Western history. Considering the difficulty of giving Western Civ adequate attention in a one- or two-semester survey, the idea of cramming the entire history of humankind into the same time constraints boggles the mind. Questions quickly arise regarding themes or organizational structures that should be used to provide a unifying conceptualization. Most often these questions are answered by choice of textbook, or if time, expertise, and funding is available, by individual teachers or departments who develop their own courses.¹ Nonetheless, the breadth of the subject often makes the choice of a textbook or the individually designed curriculum less cohesive and thus less satisfying than what is comparatively offered, for instance, in texts or course designs dealing with the survey of Western Civ. I have also come to find that even among enthusiastic proponents of world history there remains an uncomfortably broad divergence of opinion about how such a course should be structured.²