The Promise and Peril of "U.S. in the World"

Debates around U.S. foreign relations are once again at the forefront of contemporary discussions about international affairs and the global system. The dramatic international challenges that have confronted the United States since it launched ill-fated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s and the transformative presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, albeit through diverging approaches to foreign relations, have had a catalytic effect. Understanding how the U.S. exerts power and influence abroad - politically, diplomatically, economically, culturally, ideologically - have become increasingly urgent.

These discussions have coincided with significant scholarly changes in U.S. foreign relations history, especially the way it is conceptualised, researched, and taught. Historians of U.S. foreign relations now embrace global and transnational perspectives, and incorporate methodologies from cultural and social history, which has resulted in a vastly expanded field that is home to different approaches and considers a range of state and non-state actors. This shift has led to the field effectively being renamed, replacing the more prosaic and limited moniker of "Diplomatic History" with more expansive, inclusive term, "U.S. in the World." This has not only had a significant intellectual impact on the field, but has also transformed the way historians research and teach U.S. global power. The ramifications for teaching before university, as well as the popular understanding of U.S. foreign relations, has been given less attention. The network considers the promise and peril of "U.S. in the World."

This network draws together scholars in the "U.S. in the World" based in the U.K., U.S. and Europe from multiple intellectual disciplines, as well as figures in the wider learning and teaching community - including school teachers, exam boards and learned societies - to consider the opportunities and dangers of these dramatic changes in U.S. foreign relations history. It analyses the impact that new approaches have for how the topic is researched and findings conveyed to non-scholarly audiences. The key goals are to: explore the new ways U.S. "power" has come to be defined; consider how big and small histories of U.S. foreign relations are written in an increasingly diverse field; analyse the nature of sources and the identities of scholars writing this history. The result will be a critical assessment of the field that examines how "U.S. in the World" is researched, taught, and explained.

The network will hold two workshops and a teachers event. The first workshop will see three different clusters working around three central themes of i) changing definitions of "power"; ii) synthesis and complexity in a fracturing field; 3) issues of identity and archives. Each cluster will work with a world-leading figure in the field of "U.S. in the World." The second workshop, where more formal papers will be presented, will form the basis of a "conversation" roundtable from the clusters that will be submitted to a leading international academic journal. This workshop will also feature a dedicated session on conveying the diversity and richness of the field in an accessible manner to audiences beyond Universities. The final gathering will be dedicated to a teachers event, focused on the way that changes in the field have affected how modern U.S. history and foreign relations is taught in schools and colleges to AS and A-Level students. This session will feature teachers, exam board representatives, and members of the network, focusing on the pedagogical and methodological implications that changes in academic history have on how the topic is taught to students before University.

The main non-academic beneficiaries of the network will be threefold: the AQA exam board; AS and A-level history teachers and students; and general audiences via popular writing. Thus, the network's work will speak to how evolving scholarly trends influence and affect school-level teaching, as well as engaging non-academic audiences. In addition, AQA will serve as an official Project Partner to help inform the aspects related to school-level teaching and assessment.


i) AQA Exam Board

Having AQA as an official project partner will facilitate more detailed discussions of the relationship between academic research on the history of U.S. foreign relations and the way it is taught and studied in schools; it will also enable broader reflection on the sorts of skills and sources that underpin the curriculum and the extent to which they are influenced by emerging trends in academic scholarship. AQA is the largest examination board for history and, of the 44,900 students taking A-level History in 2018, approximately 22,000 are taking the AQA A-level (with over 6,000 taking modules relating to American history). Involving AQA in the second and third network events will enable discussions between them and network members, opening up conversations about the extent to which new approaches to the academic study of "U.S. in the World" translates into how U.S. foreign relations is taught and examined in schools. It will enable both network members and AQA to reflect on issues relating to teaching, pedagogy, and the methods students are taught. This, in turn, will establish the groundwork for further discussions with AQA, as well as other exam boards, about future funding bids that support work into the broader relationship between the academic study of history and school-level teaching and examining. Overall, the relationship with AQA will facilitate their discussions over curriculum development and help to further develop the dialogue between A/S and A-level exam boards and academics about cultivating the necessary skills to be a successful historian.


ii) AS and A-Level Teachers and Students

Involving a group of history teachers and subject leaders in the network's final event will enable discussions about the network's findings and their relationship to the way that the subject is taught in schools. Two sessions within local schools will also be organised toward the end of the project that make use of existing contacts of Nottingham and UEA. For teachers, this will provide an opportunity to a) engage with the network's findings and key conclusions in a direct fashion, and b) outline their own experiences teaching the history of "U.S. in the World" to their students. It will also provide a forum where network members and teachers can discuss sources, historiography, methodologies, and to consider the extent to which academic research influences school-level teaching. For students, the schools sessions will allow them to take part in discussions about broader forces informing learning and the ramifications for the questions they encounter in studying history.


iii) Knowledge Exchange for Interested Members of the General Public.

Finally, the network will disseminate key findings, particularly those relating to contemporary debates about American power, through prominent general publications and blogs. Network members have previously published pieces in the New York Times, The Nation, and the Washington Post, and their contacts will be used to place pieces during the project. In addition, we will place a piece in a popular history outlet such as History Today or BBC History articulating the network's findings for a more general audience. This will enable audiences beyond Higher Education to consider the network's key questions and will stimulate public debate for those interested in the U.S. role in the world in both the past and the present.