Publications

Podcasts and Digital Exhibits

The World History Center is involved in a variety of digital publishing initiatives including podcasts, exhibits, and open educational resources.

"Reading Historic Maps: A Practical Guide," created by WHC Research Affiliate Kathy Hart, is an educational resource designed to help students and educators better understand historic maps. Focusing on depictions of navigation and conquest in world maps, the guide explains where to find these maps and how to analyze both common and unique cartographic details. By learning to closely read historic maps, readers can deepen their understanding of history and the significance of representing place through time. Download the guide here!

Former WHC Director Ruth Mostern and WHC Research Affiliate Kathy Hart conducted research on global maps including indigenous maps and indigenous knowledge in map making, and created "How do Maps Work?: A Guide for Teachers" a podcast and digital exhibit. The 30 minute podcast was hosted by former WHC Associate Director Molly Warsh. Ruth and Kathy also selected a variety of thematic maps to illustrate the concepts which were then added to the digital exhibit that accompanies the project. Selected curricula and other resources were included in the podcast’s bibliography. 

Former WHC Director Ruth Mostern participated in a podcast about loss in the Anthropocene, part of an initiative with the Global Studies Center sponsored by the Provost’s Year of Creativity funding. The podcast also features Former GSC Director Michael Goodhart and Assistant Curator of Anthropocene Studies at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Nicole Heller. Former WHC Research Associate Ali Straub also developed a podcast with history department graduate Dr. Bethany Wade about her experience with the Teaching World History Credential. 

Through the Alliance for Learning in World History, the WHC publishes free, open access world historical resources for educators on the OER Commons (oercommons.org). The WHC has published over 100 world historical resources ranging from syllabi to assignments about using comics in the classroom, including resources created for the Alliance for Learning in World History's professional development workshops. Visit the resource library here: oercommons.org/groups/alliance-for-learning-in-world-history/14497/

The WHC supports the publication of digital exhibits created by World History Center Graduate Student Assistants in Public History as well as digital exhibits related to WHC Working Groups.

Journal of World-Systems Research

The Journal of World-Systems Research (JWSR) is the official journal of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association. JWSR is an open-access, peer reviewed journal with an interdisciplinary audience of readers from around the world. In 2018, the WHC based Journal of World Historical Information (JWHI), which published articles and reviews of datasets between 2013 and 2017, merged with the larger and more established JWSR.  WHC Founding Director Patrick Manning and Former Director Ruth Mostern both sit on the editorial board of the JWSR. Andrej Grubačić and Rallie Murray of the California Institute of Integral Studies serve as the Editor and Managing Editor respectively. Since the merger, JWSR now includes a World Historical Information section that continues to publish articles that focus on quantitative historical data and reviews of datasets.   

World-Historical Dataverse

The World-Historical Dataverse is the public archive of the CHIA project. Datasets available here were submitted by contributors, retrieved by CHIA staff, or created by linkage of existing datasets. They have been documented systematically according to the CHIA Level 1 standard of documentation. The datasets are curated and preserved permanently according to the practices of Harvard Dataverse.

Mellon History of Science Publishing Initiative

Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 was the first work produced through a publishing initiative between the World History Center, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Pitt University Press.  The inititiative is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Published in 2016 and edited by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood, the volume is meant to initiate a set of studies on the world history of science.  The scholars included in this work address global parallels and interconnections in the history of science, centering on a period of dramatic worldwide transformations in economy, politics, society, and culture. 

The second volume, Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980  was just recently published.  Combining perspectives from the history of science and world history, this volume examines the impact of major world-historical processes of the postwar period on the evolution of the life sciences. Contributors consider the long-term evolution of scientific practice, research, and innovation across a range of fields and subfields in the life sciences, and in the context of Cold War anxieties and ambitions. Together, they examine how the formation of international organizations and global research programs allowed for transnational exchange and cooperation, but in a period rife with competition and nationalist interests, which influenced dramatic changes in the field as the postcolonial world order unfolded.