What Geographies and Time Periods Do the Authoritarian 101 Modules Cover?
Authoritarianism 101: A Global History is a set of 30 primary source-driven teaching modules designed to offer teachers and students a broad perspective on the history of authoritarianism. The AHR commissioned historians working on authoritarian histories in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America, to write teaching modules that explore a singular instance of an authoritarian past. Temporally, they range from the seventeenth to the early twenty-first centuries, with the bulk of modules concentrating on the long twentieth century.
How are Authoritarianism 101 Modules Structured to Facilitate Teaching?
Each module fuses scholarly content and teaching, nesting the source in a core question, a brief context essay based on the latest scholarship, and a teaching plan that suggests varied ways to dissect the primary source. We hope that high school social studies teachers see in the modules a way to study authoritarianism through the inquiry arc, and that college professors recognize the kinds of core questions that animate the research and teaching in their fields. The query-driven design of the modules reminds us that, at its best, history is a discipline driven by good questions, the kind that lead us to compelling human stories and dilemmas worthy of deep reflection and ongoing debate.
What are Some of the Ways Teachers Can Bring These Modules into Their Classroom?
Each module in Authoritarianism 101 is built around teacher adaptability and student inquiry. Whether in high school or higher education, teachers often must cover several geographic regions over wide swathes of time, and not always with the content knowledge they would like. They must also think about how to level their primary and secondary sources, offering classroom materials that accommodate students with varied reading capacities. In designing the modules for Authoritarianism 101, we have tried to accommodate these multiple realities. The context essay in each module is concise but substantial, offering enough information to guide a teacher’s course planning. Each module also provides some suggested readings to enrich the contextual discussion.
Given how much of history instruction is source-based, most teachers already have the tools to coach students through primary source analysis. The primary sources in Authoritarianism 101 are both textual and visual, some written in an English of another time and place with a vocabulary that may seem strange to students. Instructors may decide some sources will work best with a mini-lecture or an assigned secondary reading. Not every module will fit every classroom. As you peruse the collection, think about how you can adapt or modify. We imagine many of the modules could work in a world history course in high school or in a survey course in college. Others may be more appropriate for advanced placement students or upper-division seminars in the history major. We can envision using the modules to create a new course on the histories of authoritarianism. We encourage teachers to combine the primary source analysis tools they already know work well for their students with the suggested teaching plan in each module.
What Additional Resources are Available On This Site to Help Teach the Authoritarianism 101 Modules?
Everything you need to teach these modules successfully in your classroom is readily at hand, including video and podcast interviews with many of the project contributors who talk about how and why they created their modules and offer some additional teaching tips. The project’s Authoritarianism 101 Reading List offers an even deeper dive into the global histories of authoritarianism to help guide student research papers that might venture into new topics or world areas. The reading list could also structure an orals list for graduate students.
How Could These Modules Be Used Outside the Classroom?
We imagine the individual modules that are a part of Authoritarianism 101 could be used for student-led discussions organized by high school history students, undergraduate history majors, or history graduate students. They could also be used by reading groups at local public libraries.