Organization description
Parallel Histories US is a 501c3 educational non-profit organization producing dual-narrative primary source ebooks on conflicted histories for history teachers and their students in the US.
Our mission is to empower high school students to think critically by analyzing and debating contested histories. By developing their critical thinking skills students gain confidence in navigating conflicted historical narratives that resonate in society today. Our resources cut through the rising tide of populism, helping students to participate in a healthy and civic democratic society.
Project description
At Parallel Histories, students navigate sensitive topics by going back to historical sources when investigating the causes of conflict. Our dual narrative approach provides the starting point for investigation into the historical controversy as each side tells it, first from one position and then from the other. In the process, stereotypes are disrupted, and preconceptions challenged. Students learn how to question historical claims and identify the difference between proportionate and disproportionate claims. The proven impact of this process is that young people learn how to think without being told what to think. Their views are informed by precise knowledge and greater sensitivity and tolerance to views different from their own. Not only does our approach develop the skills of the historian, but it also empowers engagement as active citizens in a pluralistic democracy.
The issue of the international role of the US vs isolationism is literally on the front page of media today with debates over wars in the Middle East, and the role of tariffs and international trade. The mid-Atlantic region of the US, both historically and in today’s modern globalized world has been, and still is, often on the front-line of US international relations diplomatically with Washington DC, militarily with bases such as NATO HQ in Norfolk, and economically through major Atlantic ports. Teachers across the mid-Atlantic form the core of Parallel Histories team, and also form the core of our outreach networks, and teachers in our region, and across the US are asking for resources to help their students understand the conflicted modern history of the US as an isolationist/protectionist power and as a global actor.
Parallel Histories US will produce an “Isolationism or Internationalism? America and the World 1898-1949” using the Library of Congress collections, and distribute this widely across the Mid-Atlantic region’s teachers, and beyond across the US, that will allow students to grapple with primary source documents and analyze for themselves the historical context of very current issues. This ebook’s target audience is regular high school US History teachers but in particular AP US History teachers and their students, for whom these themes, and this time period, forms a center part of the AP US History national curriculum.
