Newsletter

Back Issues

• Spring 2013—In this issue, we’re featuring 15 MINUTE HISTORY, our new podcast series—with supplementary materials—about World and US history. This is a joint project of Hemispheres and Not Even Past, a website with articles on a wide variety of historical issues, produced by the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in World History and US History. The discussions are conducted by the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin

• Fall 2012—Understanding Migration, the first curriculum unit created by Hemispheres in 2004, was conceived in response to numerous requests from educators concerning the presentation and discussion of issues related to human migration in the social studies classroom. In 2011, we completed the final revision of Understanding Migration. It incorporates feedback from field testers and educators who have offered constructive comments on the unit since its first publication and integrates the updated Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Social Studies. In this issue of the newsletter, we’ve included background information from the introductory PowerPoint presentation, as well as two middle school case studies. The full unit can be downloaded here.

• Spring 2012—"Teaching with Primary Sources." Hemispheres is pleased to be the recipient of the Library of Congress's Teaching with Primary Sources grant. In this issue of News from Hemispheres, we are introducing materials from our Annotated Resource Sets (organized collections of primary source materials with suggested learning activities) on world studies themes. The full sets are free and available for download here.

• Fall 2011—"Cold War Cultures." In this issue, we share primary sources pulled from the LBJ Library that are related to key Cold War themes. The issues discussed here are covered in more detail by collections of documents gathered by Hemispheres staff. Using the documents included here as an entry point, you can have students “Create a DBQ.”

• Documents related to the Dominican Crisis (PDF, 201 kb)
• Documents related to the Space Race
  • Table of Contents (PDF, 33 kb)
  • LBJ Space Treaty (TIFF, zipped, 1.2 MB)
  • Commemoration of the First Soviet Space Walk (JPG, zipped, 1.5 MB)
  • Documents, part 1 (PDF, 496 kb)
  • Documents, part 2 (PDF, 3.2 MB)
  • Documents, part 3 (PDF, 2.4 MB)
  • Documents, part 4 (PDF, 1.4 MB)
  • Documents, part 5 (PDF, 545 kb)
• Documents related to the Arab-Israeli War (PDF, 3.1 MB)

• Fall 2010 (423 KB)—"Historical Documents for Teaching about Human Rights."  What are human rights? Can you define them? Can your students? Why are they important, and who decides what they should be? Hemispheres is hard at work developing a classroom-ready curriculum unit entitled “Teaching about Rights: Historical Context, Contemporary Challenges,” scheduled to be completed in spring 2011. The following activity is a teaser from that unit: a selection of documents that your students can use to trace the development of the idea of human rights through the ages.

• Fall 2009 (792 KB)—"The City."  Why did cities first form? What function did cities historically serve? Why are cities important today? What do cities offer that people can’t get in the countryside? How do cities accommodate growing populations, and is it always possible to plan for new people?  This issue features four articles that focus on the urban phenomenon, where it came from—and where it's going.

• Spring 2009 (1.4 MB)—"Current Events." Does the news media portray certain regions of the world in a more negative light than the United States? This issue features four articles that focus on positive news stories, plus suggestions for classroom activities in media literacy that highlight media trends in reporting about the rest of the world—and about the United States.

• Fall 2008 (540 KB)—"Defining Human Rights."  What are human rights?  Who defines them?  Can the definition change?  This issue features a vote with your feet activity that asks students to consider human rights in their broader definition, and to consider what constitutes a human "right" vs. a "privilege."

• Spring 2008 (1.3 MB)—"Restoring Women to World Studies." This issue features an image analysis activity that focuses on photographs of women from each region, with short articles to provide background information, and links to further resources.

• Fall 2007 (376 KB)—"Explorers, Traders and Immigrants." This issue features short excerpts from our new curriculum unit that uses primary source documents to track the spread of various commodities around the world, and their cultural, social, and political effects on various societies.

• Spring 2007 (376 KB)—"Catching up with Hemispheres." This issue discusses new resources and initiatives that we have introduced in recent years, including our new curriculum materials, professional development for educators around the state of Texas (and beyond), and opportunities for educator travel abroad.

• Fall 2006 (376 KB)—This issue examines notable women from Inda, Democracy in Latin America, Investigating Human Rights in Morocco and The Challenges of Chechnya.

• Spring 2006 (376 KB)— This issue revisits the theme from “Antiquity and Continuity,” Hemispheres’ 2006 Summer Teachers’ Institute.

• Fall 2005 (376 KB)—This issue commemorates the UN International Year of Microcredit, looking at small-credit programs that benefit women and low-income people around the world.

• Spring 2005 (423 KB)—This issue examines notable women from each of the four regions represented by Hemispheres.

• Fall 2004 (491 KB)—This issue features articles on human geography in Egypt, India, Latin America, and Russia that were developed from the 2004 Summer Teachers' Institute.

• Spring 2004 (512 KB)—This issue features articles on individual outreach projects from each of Hemispheres' 4 component centers.

• Fall 2003 (488 KB)—This issue features articles on food culture, and recipes from around the world.

• Spring 2003 (171 KB)—This issue features an advocate/decision-making activity based on lessons presented at the 2002 Summer Teachers' Institute.

• Fall 2002 (248 KB)—Part two of our Holidays around the World series, covering the months July - December.

• Spring 2002 (184 KB)—Part one of our Holidays around the World series, covering the months January - June.

• Fall 2001 (208 KB)—This article features highlights from the 2001 Summer Teachers' Institute, new resources from Hemispheres' lending libraries, and spotlight on current events.