2025-06-26 –, Medallion A
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.
gender, collaboration, high school, diversity
Dr. Kerry Ward is Associate Professor of History at Rice University. Her publications include: Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge 2009) and The New World History (2016). She edited The Journal of World History 2016-2019.
Dr. Candice Goucher is Professor Emerita of History at Washington State University. She is authoring “Gendering Food in World History” (Routledge 2026). She published Vol.2 of the Cambridge World History: A World with Agriculture; and Congotay! Congotay! A Global History of Caribbean Food (Routledge 2014)
Dr. Laura J. Mitchell is associate professor at UC Irvine, where she teaches African and world history. She is the editor of the Journal of World History, and Past President of the World History Association. She is the author or co-author of five books, including The New World History (2016) and Panorama, A World History (2015).
Tracey Rizzo is a Professor of History at UNCA. She is the co-author of Intimate Empires: Body, Race and Gender in the Modern World (OUP 2016) and is the editor of Routledge’s “Gendering Modern World History” book series. She is co-authoring “Gendering Revolutions” (Routledge 2026)
Dr. Aldo Garcia-Guevara is Professor of History at Worcester State University. He contributed to Anti-Racist Community Engaged Principles: Principles and Practices (2023). His courses include Latin American History, World History, and Latino History. He is co-authoring “Gendering Revolutions” (Routledge 2026).
Dr. Suzanne Litrel is under contract with Routledge to publish “Gendering Friendship in Modern World History.” She is a co-editor for World History Connected and co-author of Notable Women of Colonial Latin America and Notable Women of Modern Latin America (2019). A former high school teacher, she has taught World History and Latin American History at Georgia State and Kennesaw State.