World History and Literature Initiative K-12 PD Educators Workshop

The University of Michigan International Institute’s World History and Literature Initiative (WHaLI) 2024 will explore the contested nature of histories worldwide, across case studies set in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. Discussions will include the politicization of educational spaces, multiple intentions underlying efforts to prescribe curricula, and ways that identity, power, and emotions map onto different interpretations. Participants and speakers will reflect on how to teach contested pasts with accuracy, complexity, and multi-perspectivity, how contested histories are featured in both historical and literary accounts of important events, and consider how to support and develop the critical literacies students need to make sense of conflicting ideas. Inviting students to opportunities to analyze contested histories around the world critically can create spaces for democratic dialogue, empathy, reconciliation, and critical understanding.

The two-day workshop for middle school and high school teachers focuses on these issues, using examples drawn from different historical times and areas of the world. The workshop will also illuminate challenges students face in learning such content, explore ways teachers might meet those challenges, and provide participants with relevant resources that can be used in the classroom.