History of Presidential Elections Site

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Logo, HistoryCentral.com, United States Presidential Elections
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Provides statistics on all U.S. presidential elections. For each election year, the site presents graphs showing popular and electoral votes, maps of states won by each candidate, vote count and voter turnout statistics, and a sketchy essay of approximately 100 words in length on campaign issues. Offers more extensive information on the 2000 election: official certified results; polling data by five organizations from August through October 2000; biographical statements of 300-600 words each on candidates George W. Bush,Al Gore, and Ralph Nader (the Bush bio, almost twice the length of the others, reads as if it was written by his campaign organization); a chronology of events following the election until Gore's concession; and the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, concurrence by Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissents by Justices Breyer, Souter, and Stevens, and oral arguments. Also includes an essay of 900 words on close and disputed elections, with links to "quick facts" about the candidates involved; an essay of 600 words about the reasons that the electoral college was created, with a link to Federalist Paper No. 68 by Alexander Hamilton, which offers a rationale for the institution; and a 15-minute multimedia history of the Supreme Court. MultiEducators of New Rochelle, NY produces multimedia software on historical subjects; graphs and texts in this site have been taken from their American History CD-Rom. A useful source for statistics on presidential elections, but marred by intrusive flashing ads.

America Votes: Presidential Campaign Memorabilia

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Photo, FDR campaign button, America Votes
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A potpourri of 69 images of campaign memorabilia focusing primarily on presidential elections, beginning with a 1796 letter from Supreme Court Justice William Paterson picking John Adams to win against Thomas Jefferson and closing with a Bush/Cheney 2000 button. Includes flags, letters, sheet music, bumper stickers, handbills, buttons, and even a pack of "Stevenson for President" cigarettes.

Items are indexed by candidates and parties. Includes a 600-word background essay and links to 13 sites pertaining to current political parties. Though limited in size, this site can be useful to students interested in comparing visual materials from presidential campaigns throughout U.S. history.

Lincoln on the Big Screen

Date Published
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Detail, Lincoln poster
Article Body

Have you seen Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln? With a Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating of over 90% and audience approval of more than 80%, viewers praised the film for its earnestness and significance, and for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as the president.

But what do historians have to say? How do they approach the film, and how do they assess it? Even if your students haven't seen the film, reading historians' reviews can help them understand the ways of thinking and types of knowledge that historians use to assess historical accuracy, bias, intended audience, and more.

What do historians' reviews focus on? Do they talk about the same things as "normal" critics' reviews? Do all historians share similar opinions about the movie? How do historians structure their reviews? Does each review make an argument?

Take a look at these reviews to get started:

  • James Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, says Lincoln does "what a film like this should do: stimulate discussion about history."
  • Kate Masur, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, criticizes the movie as "more to entertain and inspire than to educate."
  • David Thomson, film historian and critic, considers the film "necessary" and its release right after the 2012 presidential election significant.
  • Allen Guelzo, director of the Civil War studies department at Gettysburg College, questions whether highlighting Lincoln's conflict between ending the war quickly and holding out until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment made the movie too complicated.

Students not ready for reading these reviews? Ask them where they think the sound in films comes from. The Washington Post reveals that many of the sounds in Lincoln come from historic buildings and artifacts—including one of Abraham Lincoln's pocketwatches.

For more information

Was Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter more historically accurate than Lincoln? No, but you could still use it to teach! Check out our blog entry on the film.

Also see our blog entry on the film The Conspirator. How does it portray Mary Surratt, the only woman accused in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?

9/11 Memorial

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Rendering, 9/11 Memorial Names and Waterfall, 9/11 Memorial website
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Exactly one decade from the events of September 11, 2001, a new memorial is slated to open at Ground Zero. The memorial website offers the expected information on visiting the memorial, as well as a wealth of information which can be of use well outside of the state of New York.

Plan Your Visit is the place to go if you are considering visiting the memorial yourself or taking a class to the site. Note that there are restrictions on items and bag sizes permitted, that the site contains no public restrooms, and reservations are required with the number of group visits per day limited. Prior to the official opening, visitors can view a preview museum, which includes a StoryCorps recording booth for sharing your own 9/11 story. However, there is still a hefty amount of information here for "digital only" visitors. For example, you can read about how names will be grouped on the memorial—by location at the time of the incident, by company affiliation, and by relationships requested by next-of-kin. What does this system say about how we define ourselves today with and against other people and organizations?

In the same section, you can also find a link to a free iPhone 9/11 history application. This app provides images, a timeline, and a tour of the World Trade Center area. The tour can be used to guide an actual walk, or it can be accessed from elsewhere to explore digitally.

About the Memorial provides an overview of the memorial's design and the reasoning behind these artistic and practical choices. This can be used to get your students to question the purpose of memorials and/or how environmental designs can codify collective experience and relate to the values of their time. One simple example is the use of natural elements—trees and water—in this memorial. How do these choices relate to concepts of healing, Romanticism, sustainability, etc.

Collections includes a variety of potentially useful subpages which present a smattering of 9/11 stories with artifact images and links to oral histories, as well as a small list of international tribute projects. The subsection "Contribute" also allows you or your students to upload reaction artwork, photos, videos, or stories.

Finally, there's "Teach + Learn," a section specifically dedicated to 9/11 and contextual education. Read through the key questions for a list of a number of the big issues brought up when discussing 9/11, such as how crisis and fellowship work in tandem and how to avoid the idea of the "Other," as fundamentally unlike oneself. There are also two teaching guides, one on artistic response and another on volunteerism. Another feature is a PDF on talking to children about 9/11. One suggestion listed is that 9/11 be addressed through the stories of individuals rather than themes of good or evil. Finally, this section includes webcasts on Middle Eastern culture, memory and memorials, the aftermath of 9/11, and the building of the 9/11 memorial; an interactive timeline; an interactive version of Lady Liberty, a statue bedecked in 9/11 artifacts and ephemera; and information on domestic and international attacks.

Curating the City: Wilshire Blvd

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Photo, Prize-winning fashionable women at Beverly Wilshire Easter brunch, 1955
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Wilshire Boulevard runs for 16 miles in Los Angeles, from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica to Grand Avenue in Downtown. This website offers an interactive journey down the length of this historic street, with more than 100 stops at parks, buildings, and historic landmarks in Westwood/Brentwood, Beverley Hills, Miracle Mile/Carthay Circle, Windsor Square/Hancock Park, Wilshire Center, and the Parks District.

Virtual visitors to Palisades Park in Santa Monica, for example, can see 14 photographs and drawings of the park, spanning from the early 1900s, through the 1940s, and to contemporary photographs, and read a brief description of the park's history. Those interested in the history of architecture will find useful a website feature that allows users to filter all monuments by architect, style, and function. The website also includes a "Memory Book," allowing users to contribute their stories about Wilshire Boulevard and read the stories of others, as they talk about their favorite pizza restaurant in Westwood or their childhood in Beverly Hills in the early 1960s.

World Trade Center: Rescue, Recovery, Response

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Photo, Man and letters of support in St. Paul's Cathedral, 2011, NY State Museum
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In the words of the exhibit website, "The World Trade Center: Rescue, Recovery, Response details the history of the World Trade Center, the September 11 attacks, the rescue efforts, the evidence recovery operation at the Fresh Kills facility, and the public response to the September 11th events."

The website is divided into five sections—The World Trade Center, Rescue, Recovery, Response, and Voices.

The World Trade Center provides a brief overview of the design process, a construction and habitation chronology, statistics on the towers (did you know 17 babies were born at the WTC and that more than 3,500 people worked on the construction site?), a small amount of information on the response to the 1993 bombing, and photographs of several damaged artifacts removed from the WTC towers. The very mundane nature of these objects— for example, floor number signs and a fire extinguisher—may make them more emotionally distressing to students. Proceed with care, but recognize that the inclusion of these artifacts can provide powerful commentary on 9/11.

Rescue shares the story of the first 24 hours following the attacks. The primary focus is on the sacrifice of responders, including 343 NYC Fire Department employees. A timeline breaks the day down into small portions—in some cases minutes—with a an image and sentence describing events. Additional subsections introduce the Engine 6 Company, provide brief remembrances of the members of the company on duty at the time of the tragedy (two of whom survived), interactive schematics and images of the Engine 6 Pumper before and after damage, a description of why the WTC towers' engineering failed, and a selection of artifacts used by rescue workers. This section includes videos in which the two Engine 6 survivors discuss their experiences. These are very emotional, clearly depict pain, and also discuss the men and women that fell from the towers. As a result, educators should take care in their decisions to share these film clips.

Recovery details efforts to recover objects, the deceased, and criminal evidence from the remains of the towers after their transportation to the Fresh Kills site. Here, visitors can find information on and images of the cleanup of Ground Zero; a brief overview of the Fresh Kills site; a to-the-point listing of the sorting process complete with images; images of airplane pieces; photographic panoramas of Fresh Kills; images of items and signs used at the Fresh Kills site; and statistics concerning the site, personnel involved, and objects found. If visitors are concerned, they should be aware there are no images of human remains.

Response addresses the myriad ways in which people responded to the events. The section contains images of newspaper front pages and images of and short introductions to the Union Square scrolls and St. Paul's Chapel memorials, St. Paul's Chapel and Nino's restaurant as places of refuge for recovery workers, and the Fulton Street viewing platform from which the recovery efforts could be watched, as well as photographs of objects and messages of support from around the world.

The final section, Voices, contains lengthy audio interview clips with Patty Clark who worked on the 65th floor of the North Tower; Lee Ielpi who sought his firefighter son; and Jim and Marilyn Geiger, who offer a married couple's perspective on the situation from both within and outside the building. These interviews include individual coping strategies and descriptions of events.

While this is a strong addition to the web content concerning 9/11, it is important to note that it may be a very difficult site for many as it brings human stories of emotional pain to the forefront.

The Gaming Evolution

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Photography, Atari 2600, 26 May 2002, Joachim S. Müller, Flickr CC
Question

How have video games evolved over time?

Answer

The topic of how video games have evolved over the years is massive. There have been millions of games created in the 50 years since creation of 1962’s Spacewar!, the first true video game. So the best way to approach this topic briefly is to select a genre and survey the main trends. This essay will focus on games in the adventure/roleplaying genre in which players take the role of one or more heroes on a quest of some sort.

The earliest adventure video games were, in a sense, not video at all. Instead they used text to create worlds for the player to explore. The first of these was Adventure, designed by Will Crowther and enhanced by Don Woods. The player read text descriptions of a cave and typed in simple noun-verb commands (“go north” “take lantern”, etc.) to navigate through the cave and interact with its denizens. Text-based games worked around the limited RAM (random-access memory) in early computers by focusing on story and setting at the expense of graphics.

The earliest adventure video games were, in a sense, not video at all.

A major evolution in the adventure genre (or step back, as text-game purists might claim) was the translation of the text-adventure to a visual format. In 1980 the Atari 2600 released its own Adventure. Adventure included the exploration, loot gathering, and simple monster fighting of the early text adventures. Given the limitations on computer processing power, however, the main character had to be represented as a colored square. Objects and monsters, swords and dragons, were all represented by crude pixelated graphics. Still, the use of a joystick and a visual environment gave players the ability to explore more widely and in real time rather than in the turn-based format of text adventures.

[New games] took advantage of gaming hardware’s increasing capabilities.

With the advent of computers and consoles that could render video, adventure games, and all other video games, began to develop in similar ways. First, they took advantage of gaming hardware’s increasing capabilities. The Atari 2600 had no hard drive to store programs, virtually no RAM, and ROM (read-only memory) game cartridges with only two to four kilobytes of memory. Graphics could only be displayed at a resolution of approximately 160 by 228 pixels in 128 colors. Modern PCs have hard drives measuring in gigabytes, onboard RAM averaging four gigabytes (one gigabyte is approximately a trillion kilobytes). Perhaps more important, modern gaming PCs have dedicated chips for rendering video, allowing for graphics verging on photorealism.

Second, controllers gradually developed into the modern forms. The classic Atari joystick had a directional control and a single button. The NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) controller had a four-way directional pad and two buttons: more inputs meant potentially more actions one could take in a game. Current consoles such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 have controllers with a directional pad, one or more thumb-sized joysticks, and a series of triggers and buttons that can be combined to create a large number of different player inputs. In the PC gaming realm, the development of the mouse and keyboard combination allowed for an even greater number of player inputs.

Players of the adventure genre came to demand more sophisticated stories and moral choices.

These and other changes affected adventure games in unique ways, as well. The original text and Atari Adventure games had bare-bones stories. As the art of game design developed and the representational abilities of computers increased, players of the adventure genre came to demand more sophisticated stories and moral choices.

One of the better-known games to focus on moral elements was Bioware’s Star Wars-based roleplaying game (or RPG, a hybrid of adventure and combat games) Knights of the Old Republic. In this game players could choose to follow the “light” or “dark” side by making choices that helped or hurt in-game characters. In contrast, Bethesda’s popular Elder Scrolls RPG series, the most recent of which is Skyrim, focused on consequences to actions rather than an overarching morality system. The game’s designers created a sandbox-like environment where players could even avoid the main story altogether and focus instead on exploring the simulated world.

Video game history has not been a straight line towards larger, more complicated, more graphics-heavy games.

However, video game history has not been a straight line towards larger, more complicated, more graphics-heavy games. Text-based adventure games have not disappeared. For instance, the company Infocom developed and released text-based adventures throughout the 1980s. They actively compared their games to the crude graphics available on consoles and computers at the time: “We draw our graphics from the limitless imagery of your imagination—a technology so powerful that it makes any picture that’s ever come out of a screen look like graffiti in comparison.” When commercial sales of text-based adventures trailed off in the 1990s, fans of the format began developing text-based games themselves and distributing them for free.

For more information

Atarimania. Last modified October 7, 2012. Accessed October 10, 2012.

National Museum of Play. Online collections. Accessed October 10, 2012.

PBS. The Video Game Revolution. Accessed October 10, 2012.

Demaria, Rusel and Johnny L. Wilson. High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Osbourne, 2004.

Kent, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.

Great Lakes Maritime History Project

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Photo, Crew standing on the shipwrecked George M. Cox, May 1933
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Dedicated to recording the maritime history of Wisconsin (especially Lake Michigan and Lake Superior), this site features more than 7,000 documents, advertisements, and photographs of ships associated with Wisconsin waters since 1679. Geared toward the specialist as well as the beginner, the site contains a list of the more than 400 ships registered in Wisconsin over the years, as well as useful descriptions of the types of ships.

The collection is searchable by keyword and browsable. The quality of the photographs varies; some are small files, while others are quite large. The site recommends six related outside resources. This site would be very useful to anyone interested in the history of Wisconsin maritime shipping, passenger cruises, or naval history.

Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History

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Photo, Frederick Douglass, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right, LoC
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This collection of 20 essays on African American history and literature, commissioned from leading scholars and written for secondary teachers, is part of the larger TeacherServe site. The essays are designed to deepen content knowledge and provide new ideas for teaching. These 3,000-7,000-word essays cover three time periods: 1609-1865, 1865-1917, and 1917 and Beyond.

Essays begin with an overview of the topic. A “Guiding Discussion” section offers suggestions on introducing the subject to students, and “Historians Debate” notes secondary sources with varied views on the topic. Notes and additional resources complete each essay. Each essay includes links to primary source texts in the National Humanities Center’s Toolbox Library.

Essays in "1609-1865" focus on topics related to slavery, including families under the slavery system, slave resistance, types of slave labor, the end of slavery, analyzing slave narratives, and the work of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Essays also look at African American arts and crafts and African influence on African American culture.

Essays in "1865-1917" focus on topics that fall between the eras of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, including Reconstruction, segregation, trickster figures in African American literature, and issues of class and social division.

Essays in "1917 and Beyond" focus on literature and the Civil Rights Movement, including protest poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, and jazz in literature.

Comic Books in the History Classroom

Date Published
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Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Freddy Marvel asks readers to buy war stamps
Article Body

The summer of 2011 offers moviegoers several productions based on superheroes and comic books. Thor. X-Men: First Class. Green Lantern. Captain America: The First Avenger. Cowboys & Aliens. Hollywood has discovered that comic book movies are more than a passing fad, resonating with audiences who connect with the humanity behind the costumes. As a result, comic book-based films have grown over the last decade—both in production and ticket sales— with many more movies to be released over the next few years (The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-man, Iron Man 3, and The Avengers to name a few.)

Teachers can use the popularity of superhero films to expand students' understanding of American culture. University of Idaho professor of history Katherine Aiken explored the use of comic books to teach U.S. history in a recent essay published by the Organization of American Historians' Magazine of History (Vol.24, no.2-April 2010). Aiken concluded that because comic books reflect larger social issues in U.S. society, they can help students examine how U.S. artists addressed issues of race, gender, nationalism, and conflict in popular publications.

Some educational publishers, for their part, have produced illustrated history stories and graphic novels to capture younger readers' attention, such as tales from the Revolutionary War. While history-based graphic novels are a useful supplement to course materials, studying comic books provides a different focus in the classroom. Analyzing U.S. popular culture can help teachers and students contextualize the origins of comic books, explore how events in history shaped the evolution of this medium, and assess the ability of comics to address larger social concerns.

A few approaches for connecting comic books to U.S. history include:

  1. Chronological comparative study
    Students can create timelines, decade-level synopses, or graphic organizers that align U.S. historical events with the dates of creation of specific comic books, and show how these titles reflected social concerns. (For a nice overview on the history of comic books, Michigan State University's Ethan Wattrell's course website contains lecture slides and podcasts that can help orient educators.)

    For example:
    • 1920–30s: Comic books developed as a form of fantasy and escapism during the 1920s and the Great Depression.
    • 1940s: Superheroes went to war. Did comic books become tools for wartime propaganda, or did they simply reflect a period of national pride?
    • 1950s: Fantasy, horror, Westerns, and other genres overshadowed superhero stories. Is this a case of "hero" fatigue or socio-political concerns?
    • 1960s: The Marvel and Silver Ages: The Cold War, space race, and civil rights shaped a new era of heroes. The space race, for example, influenced the creation of the Fantastic Four and other interstellar heroes. The nuclear arms race, in turn, influenced the creation of Iron Man and the Hulk. Civil rights also played a significant role in the development of characters with social struggles, from the mutant X-Men to the blind superhero known as Daredevil and the increasing number of female heroines beyond Wonder Woman.
    • DC comics' attempt to deal with drug abuse among teens

    • 1970s–1980s: Comic books became more mature. Serious issues such as drug abuse and apartheid influenced storylines in teen-centered titles such as the Teen Titans and X-Men/New Mutants. Specific stories, such as The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, tapped into the economic and political anxieties during the Reagan era. Titles such as Sandman also introduced comic books to a new generation of female readers during the late 1980s. All three titles appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list.
  2. Addressing social issues
    Popular culture has often been able to deal with serious issues in an accessible manner. The story of Genosha in the pages of the X-Men extended the theme of genetic discrimination against mutants to issues of slavery and oppression—much like apartheid in South Africa. In this vein, comic books are an accessible way to address other social issues.

    For example:
    • Gender studies: How did the feminist movements of the 1970s affect characters like Wonder Woman and the Invisible Girl/Woman? What changes are visible in the depiction of female superheroes? How has the growing visibility of female artists, such as Louise Simonson, Lynn Varley, and Gail Simone, changed a male-dominated industry?
    • Activism: Students can study the effects of larger events such as the Vietnam War, September 11th, and the passage of the Patriot Act on comic book storylines. Recent stories such as Marvel's Civil War and World War II-era comics are useful starting points to examine individual rights and nationalism respectively.
    • Intellectual Property: Why was DC Comics unable to use the names "Superboy" and "Captain Marvel?" How did the founding of Image Comics become a significant development for independent comic books and the idea of creator rights? How do copyright and fair use laws affect the use of comic book characters in education?
  3. "Golden Age," "Silver Age," and "Modern Age" of comic books
    What characterized each of these eras? Using long-running characters like Batman and the Joker, students can assess changing social norms, expectations, and trends in the 20th-century U.S. through the evolution of specific characters.
  4. logo for Comics Code authority

  5. Government regulations and political concerns
    McCarthyism and moral issues threatened the comic book industry during the 1950s. Why? One fascinating story involves Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book that eventually led to the policing and regulation of comic books and the creation of the Comic Code Authority. This is a good period to discuss government regulations, free speech, and what made comic books a "danger" to children in the 1950s. Another topic, dealing with moral issues, is human experimentation. In this video by Emory Bioethics professor Paul Root Wolpe, he uses the genetics in the X-Men comic books to talk about Nazi experimentation on humans, the Nuremberg trials, as well as U.S. testing on human subjects.
  6. The evolution of major characters
    While Batman is one of the easiest character to compare his own evolution to changes in American society, he is not the only one that shows the influence of time and place. Tony Stark (Iron Man) famously struggled with alcoholism in the 1980s. Captain America went from World War II hero to a man out of time after decades of frozen animation. Peter Parker's (Spider-man) journey from awkward teenager to a married professional may be an easy-to-relate-to story for students. Likewise, Superman's recent decision to forgo his American identity, in order to embrace a more "global" role, created renewed interest (and a bit of controversy) in the media.
  7. Comic book creators
    How did the personal lives of writers and illustrators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, and Joe Schuster, among others, affect the tales they created? Many of these artists came from ethnic and working-class communities that shaped the setting and topics of their stories.

cover to an issue of Sheena the She-DevilComic books, therefore, can help diversify the teaching of American history and allows teachers to address important issues in a novel yet useful way. However, educators should take caution. Over the last few decades, comic books have shifted to a more mature audience and as a result the depiction of violence has become more graphic. Similarly, educators should be mindful of issues or artists that oversexualize characters.

As is the case with any material to be used in the U.S. history classroom, comic books should be previewed beforehand. Educators, however, can find plenty of "classroom-friendly" comics online or at a local comic book store. For example, the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic, Maus, commonly found at most school libraries, is a different take on Nazism and the Holocaust. Comic book companies have also increased their number of "kid-friendly" titles, easily found at bookstores like Barnes & Nobles and department stores such as Target. Finally, the first Saturday in May is "Free Comic Book Day" each year—a good chance to explore several titles at a local comic book store.

A final note:
Freddy Marvel and war stampsInterdisciplinary approaches to using comic books in the classroom are also helpful for the history teacher. Art educators often argue that reading and making comics encourages students to become more skilled at critically examining texts—full of complex concepts and human relations. Students and teachers can use comics to bridge the gap between personal experiences and history, examine the connection between comics and social groups (such as the "art world" and ethnic groups,) and to deconstruct the medium in order to gain a better sense of what issues affected society. The marriage of visuals and text also helps reach reluctant readers and bring the classroom teacher closer to youth culture. Similarly, language arts specialists find that engagement enhances reading fluency— even in the elementary years. Low-level readers, in various studies, demonstrate greater engagement with visual texts like comic books.

Captain America attacks HitlerHistory teachers can benefit from collaborative uses of comic books across disciplines. Either by working with a language arts or art teacher, or adapting diverse approaches to visual literacy in the history classroom, the use of comic books is helpful for working with others. Students will also find similar collaborative benefits in outside research and work. Whether they develop digital timelines using tools like Dipity or generate a Google Map to assess the geographic connections of comic book characters to U.S. history, digital tools are ideal for collaborations inside and outside the classroom. (Note: The Dipity and Google Map links show examples of how to use American comic books to teach U.S. History.)

Bibliography
  1. Aiken, Katherine. "Superhero History: Using Comic Books to Teach U.S. History." Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 24 (2010): 41-47.
  2. Annett, Doug. "Implementing Graphic Texts into the Language Arts Classroom". Minnesota English Journal 44 (Fall 2008): 150-179.
  3. Editorial. "Comic Books in the Classroom". New York Times January 3, 2008. Online.
  4. Hanson, Thomas J. "Holy Student Assessment, Batman! We've Hit the Schools!". Big Ideas: an Authentic Education E-Journal (March 2008).
  5. Morrison, Timothy G., Gregory Bryan, and George W. Chilcoat. "Using Student-Generated Comic Books in the Classroom". Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45 (May, 2002): 758-767.
  6. White, Ross. "Comics in the classroom". Learn NC.
  7. Williams, Rachel Marie-Crane. "Image, Text, and Story: Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom". Art Education (November 2008): 13-19. Reprinted on Iowa Research Online
For more information

Teacher James Carter offers a basic primer on how to help students create their own comic books, as well as a lesson plan that can be adapted to history content.

Comics in the Classroom offers some ideas on how to incorporate comic into social studies and how to develop lesson plans.