Comparative textbookolgy

One assignment that worked well in this semester’s World History II midterm was having them write comparisons of textbook chapters. The prompt.

For this section I would like you to write a comparative essay looking at one of the chapters from Smith and a chapter from a different textbook.

In your essay I would like to explain what the main differences between the two chapters are. What differences do they have in what they are trying to show or prove about the period? Are there important differences in their periodization? Which one does a better job of explaining the main points of the period? Which one uses the best examples that grab your interest and help to make analytical points? Please be as clear and specific as you can. Your essay should be at least 6 pages (double spaced, so 1,500 words+) and include at least two citations. You do not have to do any outside research for this, but if you do, please cite your sources using Chicago style.

Our three books are

Smith, Bonnie G., Marc Van De Mieroop, Richard von Glahn, and Kris Lane. World in the Making: Volume Two since 1300. 2nd edition. Oxford University Press, 2022.
(hereafter Smith)

-Mark A. Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien, Societies and Cultures in World History: Single Volumes Edition Chapter 1-35, Single vol. edition (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997). (hereafter Kishlansky)

-Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks et al., A History of World Societies, Combined Volume, Eleventh edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017).
(hereafter Wiesner-Hanks)

Possible comparisons (All readings other than Smith are on D2L)

Smith 20 Expansion and Isolation in Asia
vs Kishlansky 23 States and Societies in East Asia
OR Wiesner-Hanks 21 Continuity and Change in East Asia ..etc

So, why did I do this, and why do I think it worked? Part of it is that traditional essays don’t work very well. Have them try to write an in-class synthetic essay drawing on the readings and their notes…does not work. And honestly, while I can complain about these kids nowadays, that is a really hard assignment for an intro class where they don’t have any background. Realistically, the -best- you could hope for would be some bits and pieces from the notes and  readings duct taped together. Having them do it out of class (the way I have preferred for years) nowadays just gets you a lot of Chat GPT stuff. Thinking more about it, doing it this way gives them a bit a structure. If you want them to do a large scale essay on their own you will most likely just get a jumble of facts and observations or some vague generalities or both. Having them compare chapters gives them two strictures, and the chapters should have generalities (but not vague ones) supported by organized facts and observations. 

So, why do I think this worked? Well, I got some fairly good essays, and also a lot of people who seem to have at least done the reading, even if they were not doing much comparative analysis, both of which I would consider a win. As a rule, it is hard to get our students to read anything unless there is an immediate, graded reason to do so, and making a close reading part of the exam works for this.¹ It is easy for history to slip into one damn thing after another, especially if you are teaching something they have very little background in, and this did sometimes force them to think about how the two textbook authors were explaining things, periodizing things, and using examples and if this was the right way to do it.

I also did an anonymous survey about how well this worked afterwards. (22 responses out of 40-odd students). In general they were pretty positive about it. Only one who said they would never take another class with me if they could avoid it.  There were some complaints that this was too much writing. I actually put in a 6 page, two citation minimum for this (not normally how I do it) because I wanted to force them to go into the text and pull out specific examples to fill out the length, rather than just spinning out a vague one page comparison into three pages. This seems to have worked….some. Presumably I will try another version of this on the final and see how it goes.

It also helped me understand some of the problems with our textbook. There were a number of places where it was pretty clear to -me- why, for example, the textbook authors were lumping Russian expansion into Siberia and Central Asia with Asian empire building, but apparently it was not that clear to students. Likewise, the text did not actually say that China had an industrial revolution before Britain, although I can now sort of see how someone might get that out of how the book shoehorned the global context of the IR in there.

1. Discussion posts sort of work for this, but not as well.