Professor Bender will answer questions and lead a discussion on situating U.S. history in transnational and comparative contexts. The discussion will focus particularly on approaches to internationalizing the teaching of U.S. history in survey courses at the high school and college levels and include suggestions for resources or strategies.

Thomas Bender is University Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at New York University. He is also Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. His publications include Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth Century America (1975) (winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize of the Organization of American Historians), Community and Social Change in America (1978), New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time (1987), and "Wholes and Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History," Journal of American History, 73 (1986). For the past few years Professor Bender has been leading a collective effort to rethink American history in the context of our awareness of globalization that will result in Rethinking American History in a Global Age, forthcoming in 2002.

HISTORY MATTERS is a gateway to the Web for teachers of the U.S. History Survey course. It provides high school and college teachers (and their students) a starting point for exploring American history on the Web with a large number of first-person historical documents for use in the classroom, an extensive annotated list of Web links, and a range of teaching resources (including sample syllabi, teaching assignments, and forums). HISTORY MATTERS is a project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The HISTORY MATTERS Web site was created with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.