“Social Biographies as World History” is a project of the Center for World History of the University of California, Santa Cruz. It provides some model social biographies for classroom and university teachers. The social biographies included in this website were created by World History graduate students in the UCSC Ph.D. program under the direction of Edmund Burke III, Director of the CWH.

Social biography is an attempt to understand the trajectories of ordinary people’s lives through the systematic application of the research strategies of social history and the encompassing vision of world history. By reading the facts of these lives through the lens of world history, social biographies cast new light on the standard world historical narrative, with its emphasis on large scale change.

The writing of social biographies as world history has proved a remarkable pedagogical project for many graduate and undergraduate students of world history at UCSC over the last decade. Writing the social biography of an ordinary individual provides an occasion for historians to sharp research skills and improve their understanding of social processes.

To find out more about social biography, see “Writing a Social Biography.”

The social biographies included in this website with two exceptions were presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the World History Association on the theme of social biography and world history by current and former UCSC world history graduate students. Kevin MacDonald’s essay on Thomas Tew and Anders Otterness’ essay on Estavinco were originally presented to the World History Workshop, a Multi-Campus Research Group of the University of California.

The full “Globalizing U.S. History” project consists of two parts.

Part One, the Student Syllabus provides a complete syllabus of lecture titles and reading assignments for a two quarter undergraduate U.S. history survey course, for the first time conceptually connected to key developments in world history. Each part of the syllabus includes lecture titles and assigned readings. We welcome teachers who wish to pilot this curriculum.

To encourage others to adopt this approach, Part Two, the Teacher’s Syllabus , provides a brief summary of each lecture, together with a brief bibliography of essential readings that would enable an instructor to present the lecture.

Students involved in the “Globalizing U.S. History” project included Sarah Doub, Urmi Engineer, Michael Jin, Eliza Layne Martin, Kevin McDonald, Michael Murphy, Anders Otterness, David Palter, Chrislaine Pamphile, Maia Ramnath, Martin Renner, Sabrina Sanchez, Peter Valceschini and Nat Zappia.

Under the direction of Edmund Burke III, Director of the Center for World History, four UCSC graduate students in History presented a new model curriculum for U.S. history to the June 2006 meeting of the World History Association in Long Beach. The panel on “Globalizing the U.S. History Survey” included papers by Sarah Doub, Urmi Engineer, Eliza Martin and Anders Otterness.