Images of the Orient: Nineteenth Century European Travelers to Muslim Lands: A Unit of Study for Grades 9-12

A teaching unit by Susan Douglass, produced for the National Center for History in the Schools, it is based on a model of primary source inquiry and exploration of the period from the early nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. The unit includes travel accounts by Pilgrims and Tourists, Archaeologists, Artists, Photographers, Literary Figures, Colonial Officials and Politicians. The primary source accounts reflect a wide range of sometimes contradictory impressions and artifacts carried back to the European public, broadening students’ understanding of the Western gaze onto the Orient during a period of imperialism but also intensive cultural exchange. The curriculum materials can be directly downloaded from http://cie.org.

Introduction to the Institute on Religion and Civic Values Resources (IRCV)

We are pleased to announce that a group of teaching resources that were previously only available in print, have now been released to educators for free download. These teaching units were produced for the purpose of providing teachers and textbook publishers with materials based in sound scholarship to reflect global perspectives in teaching world history and humanities. The organization that sponsored these works over two decades, The Institute on Religion and Civic Values (IRCV), is a national, non-profit research center with a mission to strengthen civil society by exploring issues at the intersection of faith, citizenship, and pluralism, and to serve as a catalyst to align public policymaking with our nation’s core values. IRCV advances religious freedom, religious pluralism, and religious literacy. Utilizing a non-advocacy approach, IRCV’s research, consulting, training and resource development work encompasses areas such as public education, civic engagement, media/discourse analysis, inter-religious cooperation, and international development.