Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching the History of the Western Hemisphere

2010 ◽  
pp. 157-175
Author(s):  
Moramay López-Alonso
2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202110347
Author(s):  
Gabriel E Andrade

The management of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic will require huge worldwide vaccination efforts. In this endeavour, healthcare workers face the twofold challenge of reaching remote areas, and persuading people to take the vaccine shots. As it happens, this is nothing new in the history of medicine. Health workers can take inspiration from Francisco Xavier Balmis, a Spanish physician of the 19th century who realised the importance of Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, and led a big successful expedition to administer the vaccines in the Spanish colonial possessions of the Western hemisphere and Asia. This article presents a biographical sketch of Balmis, focusing on his expedition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 324-368
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Grantseva ◽  

For many years, representatives of Soviet and then Russian historical science paid special attention to the period of the Second Spanish Republic and, especially, to the events of 1936-1939. The Spanish Civil War was and remains a topic that attracts the attention of specialists and influences the development of a multifaceted Russian-Spanish cultural dialogue. There are significantly fewer works on the peaceful years of the Republic, which is typical not only for domestic science, but also for the historiography of this period as a whole. Four key periods can be distinguished in the formation of the national historiography of the Spanish Republic. The first is associated with the existence of the Republic itself and is distinguished by significant political engagement. The second opens after 1956 and combines the continuity with respect to the period of the 1930s. and, at the same time, striving for objectivity, developing methodology and expanding the source base. The third stage is associated with the period of the 1970s-1980s, the time of the restoration of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Spain, as well as the active interaction of historians of the two countries. The fourth stage, which lasted thirty years, was the time of the formation of the Russian historiography of the Second Republic, which sought to get rid of the ideological attitudes that left a significant imprint on the research of the Soviet period. This time is associated with the active archival work of researchers and the publication of sources, the expansion of topics, interdisciplinary approaches. Among the studies of the history of the Second Republic outside Spain, Russian historiography has a special place due to the specifics of Soviet-Spanish relations during the Civil War, and the archival funds in our country, and the traditions of Russian historical Spanish studies, and the preservation of republican memory.


Blood ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
S O'Brien ◽  
A del Giglio ◽  
M Keating

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common type of leukemia in the western hemisphere. Diagnosis and staging of CLL are usually straightforward, but predicting an individual patient's prognosis is still a challenge. Cytogenetic abnormalities provide important prognostic information in CLL and may show its molecular heterogeneity. A search for oncogene abnormalities continues, although no consistent defects have been identified. New agents such as fludarabine produce high complete remission rates and have generated interest in earlier treatment as a first step in a potential cure. Fludarabine also makes autologous bone marrow transplant feasible as a consolidation therapy. Immunologic abnormalities and minimal residual disease persist in most patients in remission. Combining fludarabine with other active agents and devising effective postremission strategies may change the natural history of CLL.


Author(s):  
Adam Crymble

After nearly a decade of scholars trying to define digital work, this book makes the case for a need instead to understand the history of technology’s relationship with historical studies. It does so through a series of case studies that show some of the many ways that technology and historians have come together around the world and over the decades. Often left out of the historiography, the digital age has been transformative for historians, touching on research agendas, approaches to teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and the nature of the archive itself. Bringing together histories and philosophies of the field, with a genre of works including private papers, Web archives, social media, and oral histories, this book lets the reader see the digital traces of the field as it developed. Importantly, it separates issues relevant to historians from activities under the purview of the much broader ‘digital humanities’ movement, in which historians’ voices are often drowned out by louder and more numerous literary scholars. To allow for flexible reading, each chapter tackles the history of a specific key theme, from research, to communication, to teaching. It argues that only by knowing their field’s own past can historians put technology to its best uses in the future.


Author(s):  
Andrea Giardina

Marxism has slowly declined in recent literature on the economic and social history of the ancient world. If one happens to run into the name of Marx or the term Marxism, it is generally within the context of polemical remark. In spite of recurrent attempts to resuscitate it as an ideal foil for anti-Communist polemic, Marxism made its final exit from the field of ancient historical studies in the 1960s, when new Marxist and Marxist-inspired historiography came to the fore. This chapter discusses the changing role of Marxism in Italian history-writing. It focuses on the historians who claim themselves as Marxists, and those who employ Marxist categories and draw on Marxist theory yet refuse to be defined as Marxists. The chapter examines the debates of the different groups on the historiographic phase marked by the circulation of Marxist concepts, analytical tools, and models outside the strictly Marxist milieu. One of the most striking aspects of this phase is the existence of a trend for the formation of research groups that shared not only an affinity or ideological adherence to Marxism, but also an interest in historical theory and a similar orientation in cultural politics. These interdisciplinary approaches stimulated the confluence of individual competences in group projects aimed at singling out new topics and developing investigational strategies. This historiographic phase also reflected a sense of community, a refusal of traditional academic hierarchies, a wish to keep individualism in check, and the rejection of erudite isolation. In Italy, these forms of association served as a means for ethical and political self-representation of cultural hegemony.


Author(s):  
Michele Valerie Ronnick

The multifaceted career of Henry Alexander Saturnin Hartley (1861–1934) has been almost entirely overlooked by scholars. It however offers us a window into the way the study of classics traveled up and down the Atlantic seaboard and through the Americas. His peripatetic life which took him from Trinidad, to Paris, to maritime Canada, to South America and also to parts of the U.S. figures into the larger history of black classicism when knowledge of classical languages was a “currency” of its own. His 134-page book Classical Translations (Nova Scotia, 1889) was a singular achievement. It is the first book of translations taken from the literature of ancient Greece and Rome that was written and published by a person of African descent in the western hemisphere.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ostler

The issue of genocide and American Indian history has been contentious. Many writers see the massive depopulation of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492 as a clear-cut case of the genocide. Other writers, however, contend that European and U.S. actions toward Indians were deplorable but were rarely if ever genocidal. To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide. Conservative definitions emphasize intentional actions and policies of governments that result in very large population losses, usually from direct killing. More liberal definitions call for less stringent criteria for intent, focusing more on outcomes. They do not necessarily require direct sanction by state authorities; rather, they identify societal forces and actors. They also allow for several intersecting forces of destruction, including dispossession and disease. Because debates about genocide easily devolve into quarrels about definitions, an open-ended approach to the question of genocide that explores several phases and events provides the possibility of moving beyond the present stalemate. However one resolves the question of genocide in American Indian history, it is important to recognize that European and U.S. settler colonial projects unleashed massively destructive forces on Native peoples and communities. These include violence resulting directly from settler expansion, intertribal violence (frequently aggravated by colonial intrusions), enslavement, disease, alcohol, loss of land and resources, forced removals, and assaults on tribal religion, culture, and language. The configuration and impact of these forces varied considerably in different times and places according to the goals of particular colonial projects and the capacities of colonial societies and institutions to pursue them. The capacity of Native people and communities to directly resist, blunt, or evade colonial invasions proved equally important.


Author(s):  
Raymond C. Miller

Interdisciplinarity is an analytically reflective study of the methodological, theoretical, and institutional implications of implementing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research. Interdisciplinary approaches in the social sciences began in the 1920s. At a minimum, they involve the application of insights and perspectives from more than one conventional discipline to the understanding of social phenomena. The formal concept of interdisciplinarity entered the literature in the early 1970s. The scholars responsible all shared the thought that the scientific enterprise had become less effective due to disciplinary fragmentation and that a countermovement for the unification of knowledge was the proper response. However, not all interdisciplinarians believe that the unification of existing knowledge is the answer. There are many ways of differentiating between types of interdisciplinary approaches. One classification distinguishes between multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Multidisciplinary approaches involve the simple act of juxtaposing parts of several conventional disciplines in an effort to get a broader understanding of some common theme or problem. Crossdisciplinary approaches involve real interaction across the conventional disciplines, though the extent of communication; thus, combination, synthesis, or integration of concepts and/or methods vary considerably. Transdisciplinary approaches, meanwhile, involve articulated conceptual frameworks that seek to transcend the more limited world views of the specialized conventional disciplines. Even though many believe that interdisciplinary efforts can create innovative knowledge, the power structure of the disciplinary academy resists interdisciplinary inroads on its authority and resources.


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