African and East Asian Global Histories

This workshop is aimed at secondary world history teachers (AP and others). We propose to take a comparative approach to exploring themes of state-building in the context of regional and global interaction (trade, diplomacy, cultural exchange, migration) across various pre-modern and modern states in China, Japan, and various states in eastern and equatorial Africa from the early modern period through the Cold War era.  We will work with a variety of sources, written and non-written, and examine various methodologies for approaching these histories and the challenges of creating comparative frameworks.