Interactions and Connections: Locating and Managing Historical Complexity*

MORE THAN EVER, history courses are crossing boundaries. For example, the college-level African Diaspora course I have been teaching is a case in point: it surveys interactions linking the African continent and its Atlantic diaspora over the past 500 years. Other examples of old and new boundary-crossing courses include surveys of world history, Western Civilization, and such thematic courses as environmental history and international relations. Courses in national history also partake of boundary-crossing. For instance, within United States history, courses which address multiculturalism, the American West, or interactions of the colonial era must cross boundaries. In teaching and scholarship, historians today are working to show students how to view the past as more than localized narratives, more than comparisons of isolated experiences. Teaching at this breadth, however, brings problems of its own. In some cases, despite the hopes of the teacher, the available course materials and texts continue to organize the past into discrete localities and time periods—leaving students with most of the work in making connections across boundaries. In other instances, where course materials provide a rich array of interactions and perspectives, students may feel deluged by