Source: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/wwwhistory/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 10:45:28+00:00

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This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the sites content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.
Visit the web review archive.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
This exhibit, curated by Carl Smith, a professor at Northwestern University, commemorates the 125th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire (1871). Offers an array of primary sources selected from materials in the Chicago Historical Society and arranged into two sections. "The Great Chicago Fire" examines the fire through five chronological chapters, while a second section, "The Web of Memory," focuses more specifically on the ways in which the fire has been remembered. This section is organized into six chapters, each devoted to a particular theme, including eyewitness accounts, popular illustrations, journal articles, "imaginative forms such as fiction and poetry and painting," and the legend of Mrs. O'Leary. Both sections furnish galleries of images and artifacts, primary texts, "special media" such as songs, a newsreel, and an "Interactive Panorama of Chicago, 1858," and chapter-specific, authoritative background essays that explore the social and cultural contexts of this catastrophe. Also includes a bibliography of 20 sources. A well-designed site that provides a wide range of diverse sources useful for studying Chicago in late 19th century and the ways that the story of the catastrophe subsequently has been told.
An indispensable resource for teachers and scholars in a wide variety of fields, but especially for historians. H-Net--an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers--contains sections on "H-Net Reviews," which publishes and disseminates reviews of books, films, museums, software, sound recordings, and websites; "Discussion Networks," a gateway to more than 130 academic discussion networks administered by H-Net via email; "H-Net Papers on Teaching and Technology," presenting 10 discussion panels on multimedia teaching; academic announcements of professional organizations, conference programs, fellowships, and prizes; employment listings; and additional websites from various H-Net special projects.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." �The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940� provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. �North Carolinians and the Great War� offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 �most popular cases�--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as "The Post and the Press" and "Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the "Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including "Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled "Rarities Vault" and "Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of "Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from EnRoute, the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.
Designed to provide support for elementary-, middle-, and high-school history teachers, this site makes the entire American Memory collection at the Library of Congress available for classroom learning. Using the more than 7 million digital sources available through American Memory's 100 collections, the creators have written and collected 140 lesson plans for teaching American history. Organized chronologically and thematically, the lesson plans are detailed suggestions for classroom activities. Each has a recommended age group and uses primary sources collected by students or teachers from American Memory. Especially useful are the included guides on using primary sources, using American Memory resources, and using digial or internet sources in the classroom. A "Professional Development" section offers online workshops and tutorials to improve teachers' digital literacy. An excellent resource for the classroom, this site would be useful to both student and teacher.

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