Continental Breakfast will be available in the Exhibition Hall.

Throughout its history, Louisville’s collectors, musicians and enslaved laborers have shaped the city’s economy, culture and natural environment. These papers by graduate and undergraduate students in the University of Louisville’s History Department will highlight the pivotal but often overlooked contributions Black labor (enslaved and free) has made to Kentucky’s famous bourbon industry; how the work of a nineteenth-century ornithologist continues to inform bird conservation efforts today; the impact of a local radio station, its DJs, and the Rhythm and Blues musicians they inspired in the 1960s and 1970s; and the intriguing and sometimes controversial cover art in a Louisville business owner’s massive collection of paperback books from the 1930s-1970s. Together, the panel will give insight into the unique contributions individuals have made to Louisville, and their continuing legacies in the city and beyond.

In the last few years, concepts that we as world history educators have been trying to convey in our classrooms and curriculums have memorably forced their way into our own and our students’ daily lives. This roundtable of MWWHA members will discuss how this has influenced our world history teaching.

The covid pandemic registered as historic and globally connected far beyond our classrooms. Comparisons were made to other historic pandemics and crises, our awareness of global interconnectedness increased, and there was certainly a heightened sense that we were living through a historic event. Similarly, not only political tensions and polarizations in the U.S. have been clear to our students, but they have an increased awareness of the global interconnectedness, not only of geopolitics, but of economics, social, cultural, and environmental factors. In short, students no longer need to be convinced that world history is relevant in their lives; they live in a world where global connectedness is almost an intrinsic part of their lives.

This roundtable includes secondary to college world history teachers who come from training in various regions, such as the U.S., Latin America and the Middle East. We will discuss how has this increased perception of living through a time that registers as historic and connected reshaped our teaching of world history? How have our students’ understandings, questions, and interest in world history shifted as an interconnected world feels more relevant and real to their daily lives? This roundtable of educators will share their initial thoughts on these questions to begin a whole-group discussion. Finally, we will consider how we anticipate that collectively living through this time of historic and global, sometimes abrupt and dramatic, crisis and change could shift the learning and teaching of world history as we look to the future.

This session offers a focused exploration of "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History", a pioneering contribution to the field of world history that reexamines early transoceanic migrations and intercultural encounters. Centering the Pacific as a space of historical connectivity, the book advances a new narrative of Asian movement into the Americas prior to European expansion, situating these trajectories within broader patterns of mobility, exchange, and human settlement. The panel will discuss the historiographical interventions of the work, its implications for periodization and regional frameworks in global history, and the methodological challenges of recovering long-obscured forms of cross-cultural contact. World history scholars are invited to engage in a critical dialogue on how transpacific perspectives can reshape our understanding of the Americas and the early global past.

Chair: Jonathan Reynolds, Northern Kentucky University

“Louisville’s Shifting Youth Sports Landscape: Busing and Title IX 1970 -1985”
Garret McCorkle, Muhammad Ali Center

“Ancient Egyptian Sports and Fundamental Principles of the Olympics”
Doaa El Shereef, Independent Scholar

“Mutt Underestimated Jeff's Pugilistic Proclivities: The Importance of Boxing in the Mutt and Jeff Newspaper comic strip (1907-1983)”
Donald Eberle, Napoleon Area City Schools

Coffee, Hot Tea, and Health Bars will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

Two recent annual meeting panels (at NCSS and AHA) engaged colleagues in a robust discussion of the new world history (TNWH) and questioned their relevance to different education sectors. Only the NCSS
panel centered gender. What if these sectors of the history profession were in the same room? Centering gender disrupts historians’ focus on events, traditional periodization, and the nation, but it can do even more to advance the conversations around diversity and inclusion.

This proposed roundtable is a continuation and merging of those conversations with a different slate of conversants and perspectives, including those of us who teach/have taught at public undergraduate institutions and high schools. Crucially, we are also actively engaged in feminist collaboration and community building as authors in Routledge’s book series, “Gendering World History.” We claim that the practice of world history both enables and needs collaborations such as ours. We cite the continuing debates about our sources, methods, scale and scope.

What is the root cause of neglect of women and gender? Why has that neglect persisted for decades? Perhaps the place to begin is at the level of synthesis rather than microhistory, where abundant evidence of biographical histories exist to support forgotten and invisible threads of the past that require reweaving into a new cloth with new patterns. When gender is centered, unexpected themes and radical revisions of periodization emerge. We share what we’ve learned along the way and invite the audience to participate in a robust discussion of why centering gender is imperative.

The large, commercial generative AI tools pose all kinds of challenges and problems for historians and our societies. Beyond these error-prone text generators, however, AI has potential to help historians to provide access and interpretation of historical sources and knowledge. Independent communities and consortia are looking at creating their own independent AI-augmented tools for working with large corpora of data in ethical, useful ways. In this workshop, you will be able to learn about and interact with two of these – The MarCoMo project and History Genie’s African newspaper database.

Chair: Justin Niermeier-Dohoney, Florida Institute of Technology

“Flooding, Grassroots Organizing, and Environmental Justice: An Exploration of Coalitional Resistance in Kentucky during President Ronald Reagan’s Administration”
Brooklyn Lile, Western Kentucky University

“When Is a Protest Safe for Empire? The 1946 Singapore Strike and the 1946 Rangoon Strike”
Matthew Bowser, Alabama A&M University

“These Walls Can Talk: Analyzing Graffiti and Murals of Modern Revolutionary Movements and Protests”
Monica Ketchum-Cardenas, Arizona Western College

This is a networking lunch for World History Instructors at Community Colleges. Meat and Vegetarian sandwiches will be available. Unfortunately, due to the smaller size of this meal, no gluten free or vegan options will be available.

Chair: Cynthia Ross, East Texas A&M University

“The Legal Battles of Muhammad Ali: Navigating Censorship and Religious Freedom in the American Courtroom”
Sarah Eltabib, Adelphi University

“Wedding Bells and ‘Marriage Rings’: An Examination of a Controversial 1918 El Paso Matrimonial Bureau”
Hannah Shepherd, East Texas A&M University

"Beyond the Bars: Reintegration as Protest and Systemic Resistance"
Joy Ferdinand, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

“Anbara Salam Khalidi and Halide Edib Adivar: Political Feminism, Opposing Nationalisms, and the End of the Ottoman Era”
Richard Garlitz, University of Tennessee-Martin

Join the WHA Executive Committee in a conversation about the unique insights, trials, and tribulations of studying, teaching, and building a community around World History in this current moment.

Chair: Elise Franklin, University of Louisville

“Guan Daosheng: The Greatest Woman Artist of the Yuan Dynasty”
Yufeng Wang, Sinclair College

“Tequileras and Shebeen Queens: Female Involvement in Prohibition Era South Texas and Liquor Regulation in South Africa under Apartheid”
Corina Gonzalez-Stout, Northwest Vista College

“Public History, Allyship, and Social Activism in the Revival of Pulque in 21st-century Mexico”
Aurea Toxqui, Bradley University

“Apart from Annetta and Fryer: A Postcolonial History of Deaf Education in Modern China”
Shu Wan, University at Buffalo

Chair: Nicole Magie, University of Olivet

“Fractured Nation: Peripheral Intransigence and the Challenges of an Integrated Pakistan”
Iram Naseer Ahmad, Forman Christian College

“The Concept of ‘Bengal’ and ‘Bangladesh’: Identity and Region Formed and Imagined”
Md. Aksadul Alam, University of Dhaka

“Finlandizing a Soviet Territory: Nation, Culture, Language, and Geopolitics in the Soviet-Finnish Borderlands”
Diego Benning Wang, Princeton University

“Big Questions That Only World History Can Answer”
Rick Szostak, University of Alberta

Coffee, Hot Tea, and an assortment of Cookies and Brownies will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

Presentations by current and former graduate and undergraduate students as well as members of the local community groups with whom the students collaborated and/or are collaborating.

Invited Panelists from local community groups:
Stewart Ferrell, South Louisville Project Committee
David Fitzgerald, South Louisville Project Committee
Christine Marshall, South Louisville Project Committee
Lynn McCrary, Chickasaw Book Project Committee
Donovan Taylor, Chickasaw Book Project Committee, The Chickasaw Neighborhood Heritage Hike

Protests serve as catalysts for change, but their long-term impact depends on effective policy reform. This roundtable discussion will explore how protest movements, particularly those related to criminal justice reform and reintegration, have successfully led to systemic change. By analyzing key historical and contemporary examples—including the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and global justice movements—this session will highlight strategies that translate activism into legislative impact and long-term institutional transformation.

Through comparative case studies, we will examine how grassroots movements have reshaped policies on policing, incarceration, and reintegration. This session will integrate historical protests that led to significant legal shifts, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and South Africa’s post-Apartheid justice model. By incorporating digital activism and international advocacy strategies, we will explore how social movements can extend their influence beyond street protests to institutional reforms.

Participants will engage in live polling, small-group discussions, and guided reflections to evaluate the effectiveness of various protest strategies in shaping policy reforms. The discussion will address common critiques of protest movements—such as claims that they lack tangible results—and counter them with data-backed evidence of protest-driven policy changes. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies to sustain reform efforts, ensuring that reintegration policies become part of a broader justice-driven resistance. This session aims to provide a roadmap for scholars, activists, and policymakers to transform advocacy into structural change.

Chair: Lawrence Abrams, Portland Public Schools

“Digital Territories and Cultural Sovereignty: The National Film Board of Canada’s Interactive Media as Sites of Protest and Resistance”
*John Bessai, Independent Scholar

“Frank Buck’s Jungleland: Animal Exhibitions, Sensational Pugilism, and Imperial Southeast Asia in the 1930s”
Matthew Schauer, Oklahoma State University

Presidential Address by Trevor Getz, followed by a keynote address by Christel N. Temple, University of Pittsburgh on “Pan-Africanism and Muhammad Ali”

Our opening reception will be a buffet dinner in the Oakroom Ballroom. There will be a cash bar with the WHA providing one drink ticket per attendee.

Continental Breakfast will be available in the Exhibition Hall.

The papers in this panel apply interdisciplinary approaches, including assessments of material and textual sources, to examine conflicting meanings, uses and interpretations of ancient, medieval and modern communal spaces. Why were Romans so fascinated by the female gladiators who dared to subvert societal expectations and fight like men in public arenas? Why were women and female children buried outside a Byzantine church more than men and boys? Why did a medieval community in the eastern Mediterranean decide to place two women in the same grave and what can this tell us about local experiences and perspectives of gender and cemeteries? How can cross-disciplinary collaboration combat the destruction recent terrorist acts have caused to cultural heritage sites in order to protect the rich ancient and medieval history of the Middle East? These case studies of shared spaces reveal the complexity of societal gender, class and cultural norms. By considering the spaces through multiple disciplinary and evidentiary lenses, the presenters offer new insights and tools for understanding and preserving the ancient and medieval past.

This roundtable examines the the global politics of foreign aid during the Cold War. It focuses on the complex and often contested role of CARE International, which has been one of the largest, non-governmental, international aid organizations in the United States since 1945. Situated between U.S. foreign policy interests and the needs of local state governments, CARE navigated liminal spaces that alternately aligned with and resisted the directives of the U.S. government. This roundtable's discussion explores key themes, including the evolution of foreign aid as a tool for winning "hearts and minds" in the Cold War, the ways CARE’s work reflected broader shifts in humanitarian practices, and the critical influence of local populations in shaping American aid strategies. By highlighting moments when CARE refused to cooperate with U.S. instructions, the roundtable foregrounds the contested spaces where the organization mediated between being an arm of state power and maintaining its independence.

This roundtable brings together historians from the Woodrow Wilson Center's Global Research Initiative, which unites scholars from around the world to conduct focused research on a single archive with global reach. Participants include specialists in the histories of Egypt, Korea, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and the United States, working across multiple languages and disciplines to interrogate the global history and impact of American foreign aid. Engaging directly with the conference theme of protest and prohibition, this roundtable highlights how CARE’s decisions embodied resistance to dominant political narratives while navigating operational constraints, offering a nuanced perspective on the multifaceted narratives underpinning Cold War-era foreign aid.

Chair: Aurea Toxqui, Bradley University

“The Malcontents - A Protest for Votes, Slavery, and Alcohol in Colonial Georgia”
Matthew Hacholski, Independent Scholar

“Influenza Pandemic in 1918 and the Industrial Laborers: Examining the Impact of the Global Pandemic on the Industrial Laborers of Colonial Madras”
*Kanchi Venugopal Reddy, Pondicherry University

“Beyond Violence: Global Histories of Private Gun Ownership and State-Society Relations in the Modern Era”
Lei Duan, Sam Houston State University

“A Fine Balance? Urban Development and the Politics of Diversity in Oman, 1970-2020”
Javier Guirado-Alonso, Kennesaw State University

Chair: Ruth Mostern, University of Pittsburgh

“Early Ethiopia in World History”
James A. Quirin, Fisk University

“Chinese Tea and Early Modern Sino-European Medical Exchange”
Yiyun Huang, University of Tennessee

“‘The China Fishing Bird’ in the Maldives: Maritime Asia and Mountainous Yanzhou Prefecture, Southwestern Zhejiang Province, China”
Bin Yang, City University of Hong Kong

This panel presents three papers showcasing the different and convoluted ways in which people become and interact with the idea of being American. These works all approach this central topic from separate angles and ethnic perspectives, such as Anglo-American immigration in Mexican-controlled Texas, Japanese-American labor struggles, and Arab-American immigration and identity. As well as coming at the topic with similar themes, such as building community, crafting identity, and navigation of immigration laws.

Our goal is to foster conversations about American identity, power structures, and the construction of a National identity. It is more important now than ever to center narratives that demonstrate the historical precedents of American xenophobia that are reflective of our current political climate. While the experiences of each group remain unique, but there are common threads that tie their stories together in the history of the American experience. The question we posit then is, how does the process of becoming an American differ for different communities at different times?

Coffee, Hot Tea, and Health Bars will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

The oceans and seas of the world are at a crucial crossroads in their history. The pace of change, driven by the globalization of the world economy, continues to accelerate, particularly in key regions of oceanic value. At the same time, issues concerning coastal administration and management are becoming increasingly widespread and complex. This volume offers an in-depth investigation into ocean conflict, governance, and strategy from an interdisciplinary perspective, involving the vast range of interactions between oceans and seas. It also explores the complexity of human activities on the oceans, with a particular focus on maritime conflicts in Asia. The purpose of this book is to examine the perspectives of key actors in Asian maritime policy and their responses to the challenges of internal and territorial security in Asian waters.

This panel explores how boxing and entertainment were shaped across the African continent by racial identities and global currents related to race, empire, and Pan-African solidarities. Using the cases of legislation regarding race and the sport of boxing throughout the British Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Zaire '74 concert (tied to the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" fight), and the failed attempts by a black South African promoter to bring Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali to apartheid South Africa, this panel interrogates how African sport and leisure was shaped by its surroundings and how its surroundings were shaped by them.

Chair: Cate Fosl (she/her), Founding Director of the University of Louisville Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, and Professor Emerita, UofL Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Amber Duke (she/her), Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky (ACLU-KY)

Aukram Burton (he/him), Executive Director, Kentucky Center for African American Heritage

Sonja Wilde-de Vries (she/they), Grassroots Activist & Leader in Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice (LSURJ), Organizer in the Ceasefire Coalition, Life Long Queer Poet, Photographer and Documentary Filmmaker

K. A. Owens (he/him), Co-Chair, Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

University of Louisville faculty will share their experiences using digital tools and assignments to increase student engagement and support learning outcomes. This workshop session will include sample lesson plans for group and individual digital projects—such as movies and museums—and a virtual reality demo. Participants will have the opportunity to use VR headsets to visit an ancient site and ask one of UofL’s instructional technology specialists how their institutions might support these types of projects.

This is an opportunity for conference participants to hear about World History Connected's vision and related publication opportunities. The Editor will walk participants through the publication process, especially addressing the concerns and questions of attendees that have not yet published work and those interested in guest editing a forum on a special topic.

This is a networking lunch for k-12 World History Teachers. Meat and Vegetarian sandwiches will be available. Unfortunately, due to the smaller size of this meal, no gluten free or vegan options will be available.

The WHA is excited to announce two Presidential Plenary sessions for 2025. These sessions will be combinations of roundtables and forums covering key topics in the field of World History.

Chair: Bob Bain, University of Michigan

Eric Beckman, Anoka High School
Emi Iwatani, Digital Promise
Jesse Spohnholz, H21 & Washington State University
Tamara Shreiner, Grand Valley State University

Coffee, Hot Tea, and an assortment of Cookies and Brownies will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

Stefan Tanaka's book History without Chronology (Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11418981) emerged from his recognition that the writing of histories of non-Western places are handicapped, if not predetermined, by the linearity of history. HwC then argues that other understandings of time, history, and change are possible, indeed necessary if we are to achieve a respect for heterogeneity. This panel will explore the merits of the argument, its implications, and the possibilities for another understanding of history.

Shellen Wu, Lehigh University
Emily Mokros, University of Kentucky
Stefan Tanaka, University of California, San Diego
Carl Kubler, Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Kramer, Vanderbilt University

Chair: Malcolm Purinton, Northeastern University

“Aligning the Canal with the Aqueduct: Water Infrastructure, Protest, and Imperialism in Urban Panama, 1903-1931”
Francisco Javier Bonilla, Carnegie Mellon University

“On Golden Ground: Chemistry and the Comparative Political Ecologies of Soil in Early Modern Empires”
Justin Niermeier-Dohoney, Florida Institute of Technology

Chair: Corina Gonzalez-Stout, Northwest Vista College

“A Brief Discussion on the Progress of Women's Education Development in Macau”
Wen Rujia, University of Macau

“Migration Intention and the Quest for Entrepreneurial Start-ups among Nigerian Youth”
Olaolu Peter Oluwasanmi, Durban University of Technology

“Protest and Place: Fighting My Unconscious Bias in Research with Ramona Bennett (Puyallup) as My Guide”
Vera Parham, American Military University

“A Thematic Timeline of World History”
Rick Szostak, University of Alberta

These are five minute presentation slots intended to give brief summaries or introductions to relevant topics.

Do you have an early stage research project that you'd like feedback on? Are you an undergrad or graduate student who wants a low pressure way to present at a conference? Do you have an idea that's not big enough for a full research project but really want to share with your peers? Do you have thoughts on how current events are effecting the field of World History but they're changing to rapidly to prepare a full talk in advance of the conference? This is the right format for you!

You can still sign to give a lightning round session here: https://members.thewha.org/page/lightning_round

This interactive session shares how to integrate “big history’s” deep-time insights into an introductory world history course whose temporal and conceptual vision might otherwise remain more delimited. Asked to teach my department's exploratory gateway "Ten Days That Shook the World" course, which had typically been framed around specific calendrical moments in modern world history, I decided to reimagine what might be meant by a day.

David Christian's Origin Stories is a springboard for thinking of "ten days" as ten turning points -- some lasting microseconds, some more reminiscent of an actual calendrical day, and some spanning thousands, millions, or billions of years -- encouraging students to contemplate their, and others' place within the cosmic past, present, and future. We also reflect on how historiographies and other theorizing examining each "day" in question challenges our sense of time, place, and historical truth.

A manifest starting point is the Big Bang’s microseconds (including the open question of preceding quantum fluctuations), together with millions of years’ aftermath, taken in conjunction with twentieth-century scientific debates over the universe's formation. Considering figures like Lemaitre, Einstein, and Hoyle, through Nicholas Spencer’s recent book Magisteria, asks how worldview-shaping stories inform, and shape our own assessment of pivotal historical “days”. Moving across 13.8 billion years without pretense of exhaustive coverage, another emblematic moment comes with March 15, 44 BCE. We consider the assassination of Julius Caesar, by reading Shakespeare’s play from some 1600 years later, to reflect on how changing circumstances over two millennia continually reshape our notion of what occurred on the Ides of March (and for that matter, present perceptions of tyranny). Proceeding toward the future's unknown days, students are invited to think critically about phenomena like presentism, teleological reasoning, and various modes of historical narrative.

The WHA Council will meet to discuss governance and operations. Dinner will be provided.

Continental Breakfast will be available in the Exhibition Hall.

The WHA Executive Director and Officers present the state of the organization to the membership. This meeting is open to all attendees.

The Louisville-produced documentary "City of Ali" examines Muhammad Ali's deep connection to Louisville and chronicles the global celebration of his life that took place following his death in 2016.
The film offers a local perspective on Ali’s evolution from an aspiring boxer who faced racial segregation in his hometown to a global icon who was once banned from his sport for his stance on the Vietnam War.
Yet on the day of Ali’s funeral, more than 100,000 people lined the streets of Louisville to celebrate his life and an estimated global audience of one billion people watched his hometown and the world say good-bye to The Greatest.
Ali’s life and legacy embody the 34th World History Association's conference themes of protest, prohibition, and pugilism. "City of Ali" features insights from local and national scholars, journalists and historians including Pulitzer Prize-winners Doris Kearns Goodwin and David Maraniss.
This session will feature an introduction by "City of Ali" director Graham Shelby, who will also take questions afterward and discuss how the city of Louisville responded to the sudden influx of diverse groups of people who gathered here to pay their respects to Muhammad Ali.
"City of Ali" premiered in 2021 and has an 88 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has aired over 400 times on PBS stations nationwide and is featured on Delta Air Lines and Prime, AppleTV, Tubi and other streaming services.
The U.S. Department of State selected "City of Ali" for inclusion in the American Film Showcase and other cultural diplomacy programs and the film has been screened in the UK, France, Colombia, Nigeria, the UAE, and many other countries in multiple languages.
Curriculum guides to the film are available for classroom instructors at cityofali.com.

Coffee, Hot Tea, and Health Bars will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

The Iberian Atlantic World encompasses diverse environs, peoples, cultures, religions, and societies scarred by the Atlantic slave trade and connected by a shared experience of conquest and colonization. This panel travels both spatially and temporally through this variegated world, from Spain’s earliest colonial projects in the Atlantic islands and the management of trade relationships in late colonial Florida to an interrogation of the development of Afro-Brazilian culture on the margins in the nineteenth century. Through discussions of diverging views and experiences of slavery, commerce, and economic and imperial policies, this panel re-centers marginalized histories of people and places, offering compelling and complementary narratives essential to understanding the complexity of the Atlantic World.

This roundtable engages with the conference theme "Protest, Prohibition, and Pugilism: Louisville and the World" by examining how immersive educational experiences function as forms of witness and protest against racial injustice. Just as Louisville became a focal point for global demonstrations against racialized state violence following Breonna Taylor's killing, our immersive programs place students at sites where historical traumas and resistance occurred.

Our proposed discussion brings together four educators who lead immersive travel programs that engage students with histories of racial injustice and resistance. Specifically, we will discuss how immersive travel programs enable students to engage with contested histories and ongoing legacies of racial capitalism, colonialism, and resistance. Through the Parker Dailey Seminar for Racial Reconciliation in Charleston and the service-immersion program at St. Labre Catholic Indian School in Montana, students confront the physical landscapes where slavery, Indigenous displacement, and resistance occurred while complicating students' understanding of memory, protest, and their own positionality. Drawing connections to Louisville's own history of racial protest and the global dimensions of resistance to racialized state violence, we seek to start conversations about the possibility—and, we would argue, necessity—of using in-situ education about history to confront the violent inheritances that still structure our present politics. By physically placing students in these contested spaces, immersive education helps them understand protest not as an isolated phenomenon but as part of global historical patterns of resistance to racial oppression.

Contributors will examine how immersion experiences reveal connections between historical injustices and contemporary inequities, how place-based education creates encounters with memory that challenge simplistic narratives, the tensions between students' expectations of "protest-worthy" histories and the complexities they encounter, and the pedagogical approaches that position students as witnesses rather than saviors.

This panel is a workshop led by the H/21 Project (History for the Twenty-First Century), a collaborative project of the World History Association. The presenters will discuss the project goals and open-access resources available to world history instructors, and then lead an interactive workshop to demonstrate practical examples of course materials that college and university instructors have successfully implemented in introductory world history courses. Audience members will have the opportunity to practice using H/21 learning materials and consider various ways in which they might implement these lessons in their classes. This panel will also showcase evidence of successful outcomes of these lessons, based on surveys and studies conducted by the H/21 team.

This is a companion session to the screening of "City of Ali," a documentary that explores Muhammad Ali's roots in Louisville and chronicles the historic celebration of his life that took place in the city following his death in 2016. The film offers a local perspective on Ali’s evolution from an aspiring boxer who faced racial segregation in his hometown to a global icon who was once banned from his sport for his stance on the Vietnam War.
Yet on the day of Ali’s funeral, more than 100,000 people lined the streets of Louisville to celebrate his life and an estimated global audience of one billion people watched his hometown and the world say good-bye to The Greatest.
Released in 2021, the film has aired more than 400 times on PBS stations nationwide, and been screened in more than 25 countries by the U.S. Department of State through its global cultural diplomacy programs.
Director Graham Shelby will share clips from the film and lead a panel discussion with local voices who talk about the legacy of Ali, and of a singular moment in Louisville’s history that came to be known in Louisville as "Ali Week" - the seven days between Ali's passing and his funeral. That's when diverse groups of people from across the city put aside political, social and religious tensions to join in common purpose and pay their respects to The Champ. As one of the interviewees says in the film, “I know what America can be. I saw it that week (in Louisville).” And as another says, “There was a sense of peace over the city that entire week. Why can’t we do that every day?”

The iconic imagery of the comic book will forever be associated with pugilistic exploits of the likes of Captain America, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and a slew of other American superheroes, but the fact that the historiography and periodization of the entire medium of the graphic novel, et al has been tied to those same heroes and their US-centric cultural context presents a special problem for reading the history of the medium. The current periodization schema has failed to keep up with global trends in production and consumption, changes in cultural influences, and has never adequately described shifting in moral standards and social norms.

It may be impossible to fully extricate the history of the graphic narrative from the US hegemonic cultural milieu and its association with, as we like to call it, ‘punching nazis,’ however, this round table seeks to start a conversation, an opportunity to bring together scholars from disparate world historical fields together to discuss ways of nuancing, re-shaping, or even breaking this long historiographic dependency. World cultural changes post 9/11, shifting points of view on and in response to fascism, globalized perspectives on non-hegemonic and counter-hegemonic centers of production, inclusion of early-modern or antiquated graphic narratives, and the numerous other ways to look at what can be a ‘comic’ all inform this round table discussion. We especially invite scholars both familiar and unfamiliar with the topic with an interest in the field to join us. It is our hope that this session becomes the first step in the development and production of a more truly global historiographic text.

Are you a conference knitter? Do you travel with an embroidery kit tucked away in your backpack? Is your preferred type of social interaction chatting while chipping away at your latest work in progress? Grab whatever project you're working on and join us for this laid back social event.

The WHA is excited to announce two Presidential Plenary sessions for 2025. These sessions will be combinations of roundtables and forums covering key topics in the field of World History. This session will comprise of a discussion on current trends in Research in World History.

Coffee, Hot Tea, and an assortment of Cookies and Brownies will be available in the Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by GUST

Ali the Activist
A Panel Proposal

This panel will focus on the dynamic national and international activism that made Muhammad Ali far more than a famous boxer. From resisting the draft to fight in Vietnam and returning to sports, to international diplomacy leading up to the 1980 US boycott of the Moscow Olympics, to the references to excessive force by dogs in histories of enslavement and in Civil Rights struggles, the legacy that Ali left transcended sports. This panel reconsiders how this pugilist expanded fighting far beyond the ring, from Louisville across North America, to multiple contexts in Africa, and beyond.

This panel will examine links between Vietnamese and American Revolutionary Feminists, Revising
the Teaching of Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Modernism and Resistance in Thuận’s novel, Chinatown.

Chair: Matthew Bowser, Alabama A&M University

“Economic and Geopolitical Promises and Challenges: South Africa as a Case Study in China’s Belt and Road Initiative”
Yuegen Yu, Central State University

“Medical Progress and the Second Slavery”
Chris Willoughby, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Chair: Timothy Fritz, Mount St. Mary’s University

“Edwardsean Exegesis in an Age of Revolution and an Age of Slavery”
John T. Lowe, University of Louisville

“The US Civil War as a World Revolution”
Martin Johnson, Miami University

“Roots in Manchester and Louisville: Muhammad Ali Visits Phil Magbotiwan in Manchester, 1971”
Haseeb Khan, Manchester Metropolitan University

The H/21 Project (History for the Twenty-First Century) is a collaborative project of the World History Association, which seeks to rethink world history curricula by designing inquiry-based and student-centered lessons on critical topics in world history. The goal of this project is to support college and university faculty by offering open-access instructional materials, which include curated lessons with primary sources, instructor guides, and classroom activities. On this panel, three H/21 authors will discuss their new modules, based on their original research. Eric Nelson’s presentation explores the relationship between “Big History” and local history, challenging students to draw connections between their lives and large-scale developments in cosmic and human history. Wendy Urban-Mead will present a lesson about Africans and the African diaspora in World War I, centering the experiences of African colonial subjects in French West Senegal and German and British East Africa. Brenna Miller’s presentation will address teaching the history of the construction of large-scale dams in the twentieth century, through case studies of post-World War II damming projects in Egypt, Ghana, and India. All of these papers offer a discussion of interactive, student-centered pedagogical strategies, highlighting the use primary sources in the classroom, critical thinking, and historical empathy.

Awards ceremony followed by the closing Keynote by Hannah Drake, a local Louisville author, poet, spoken word artist, blogger, storyteller, speaker, and activist.

Our closing reception will be a plated dinner in the Rathskeller, the room where F. Scott Fitzgerald began writing the Great Gatsby. There will be a cash bar with the WHA providing one drink ticket per attendee.