Resources for Students and Teachers of History, Religion, and other Humanities
Why study history and the humanities?
Here are some reasons. Here are others, and still others. Don't worry, you'll get a
job -- in fact, your employers will love you, and a humanities degree will give you
great learning potential. Your history major will teach you to put together
fragments of evidence and context to tell stories and draw conclusions -- and that's
exactly what you have to do when you draw up a business plan, defend a legal case,
arrive at a medical diagnosis, run a committee, or prepare for meetings and
interviews. History, along with other disciplines in the humanities, will give you the
broad thinking skills you need for critical reasoning, problem-solving, and simply
understanding the world around you (which is itself a pretty valuable real-life skill).
You'll learn to write, too. So go ahead and follow your passion. Your humanities
degree will serve you well, even if you never teach a class.
Here are some reasons. Here are others, and still others. Don't worry, you'll get a
job -- in fact, your employers will love you, and a humanities degree will give you
great learning potential. Your history major will teach you to put together
fragments of evidence and context to tell stories and draw conclusions -- and that's
exactly what you have to do when you draw up a business plan, defend a legal case,
arrive at a medical diagnosis, run a committee, or prepare for meetings and
interviews. History, along with other disciplines in the humanities, will give you the
broad thinking skills you need for critical reasoning, problem-solving, and simply
understanding the world around you (which is itself a pretty valuable real-life skill).
You'll learn to write, too. So go ahead and follow your passion. Your humanities
degree will serve you well, even if you never teach a class.
Resources
American History Resources
Professional Organizations:
The American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Blogs, Podcasts, and Digital Commons:
Ben Franklin's World
The Conversation
Historiann
History News Network
H-Net
Jacksonian America
The Junto
Made by History (Washington Post)
Retropolis (Washington Post column and podcast)
Tenured Radical
U.S. Intellectual History Blog
We're History
American Religion Resources
Professional Organizations and Research Centers:
American Society of Church History
Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
Pew Forum, Religion and Public Life
Blogs, News Sites, and Digital Commons:
The Immanent Frame
Religion Dispatches
Religion in American History
Religion News Service
The Way of Improvement Leads Home
Professional Organizations and Resources for Higher Education and K-12 Social Studies Education
American Association for University Professors
American Association for University Women
Chronicle of Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed
National Council for the Social Studies
Primary Source Collections and Curricular Resources for Social Studies Teachers and History Professors*
270toWin
American Memory (Library of Congress)
The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara)
The Avalon Project (Yale University): a primary source collection focused on American legal history, including medieval and
early modern precedent
Bill of Rights Institute
C-SPAN Newsreels (original footage of historic events)
Center for Civics Education
The Choices Program (Brown University)
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress)
Crash Course Films
Declaration Resources Project (Harvard University)
DocsTeach (National Archives)
EDSITE!ment (National Endowment for the Humanities)
Experiencing History: Holocaust Sources in Context (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The Flow of International Trade (interactive map by Visual Capitalist)
Freedom in the World, 2018 (Democracy in Crisis)
History Matters (George Mason University)
Holocaust by Bullets (interactive map)
iCivics.org
Internet Archive
NewseumEd: a media literacy website from the now-closed Newseum in Washington, D. C.
Oyez: a site devoted to the Supreme Court
PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization)
Program for Teaching East Asia (CU Boulder)
Project Gutenberg
The Public Domain Review
Reacting to the Past (Barnard College)
Reading Like a Historian (Stanford University)
Social Studies Central
TeacherServe (National Endowment for the Humanities): includes units on American religion, American environmental
history, and African American history and literature
Teaching American History
TeachingHistory.org
Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008 (University of Richmond)
World History Matters
World History for Us All (San Diego State University)
*For more, see my page on anti-racist teaching resources.
Professional Organizations:
The American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Blogs, Podcasts, and Digital Commons:
Ben Franklin's World
The Conversation
Historiann
History News Network
H-Net
Jacksonian America
The Junto
Made by History (Washington Post)
Retropolis (Washington Post column and podcast)
Tenured Radical
U.S. Intellectual History Blog
We're History
American Religion Resources
Professional Organizations and Research Centers:
American Society of Church History
Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
Pew Forum, Religion and Public Life
Blogs, News Sites, and Digital Commons:
The Immanent Frame
Religion Dispatches
Religion in American History
Religion News Service
The Way of Improvement Leads Home
Professional Organizations and Resources for Higher Education and K-12 Social Studies Education
American Association for University Professors
American Association for University Women
Chronicle of Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed
National Council for the Social Studies
Primary Source Collections and Curricular Resources for Social Studies Teachers and History Professors*
270toWin
American Memory (Library of Congress)
The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara)
The Avalon Project (Yale University): a primary source collection focused on American legal history, including medieval and
early modern precedent
Bill of Rights Institute
C-SPAN Newsreels (original footage of historic events)
Center for Civics Education
The Choices Program (Brown University)
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress)
Crash Course Films
Declaration Resources Project (Harvard University)
DocsTeach (National Archives)
EDSITE!ment (National Endowment for the Humanities)
Experiencing History: Holocaust Sources in Context (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The Flow of International Trade (interactive map by Visual Capitalist)
Freedom in the World, 2018 (Democracy in Crisis)
History Matters (George Mason University)
Holocaust by Bullets (interactive map)
iCivics.org
Internet Archive
NewseumEd: a media literacy website from the now-closed Newseum in Washington, D. C.
Oyez: a site devoted to the Supreme Court
PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization)
Program for Teaching East Asia (CU Boulder)
Project Gutenberg
The Public Domain Review
Reacting to the Past (Barnard College)
Reading Like a Historian (Stanford University)
Social Studies Central
TeacherServe (National Endowment for the Humanities): includes units on American religion, American environmental
history, and African American history and literature
Teaching American History
TeachingHistory.org
Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008 (University of Richmond)
World History Matters
World History for Us All (San Diego State University)
*For more, see my page on anti-racist teaching resources.