Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser: On survey textbooks that are organized around minorities

In 2001, in our first endeavor as editors of the "Textbooks and Teaching" section, we focused on the foundational course in our field, the American history survey. In a "virtual round table," scholars from all over the United States, representing different generations and situated at a wide array of institutions, discussed the pedagogical strategies they used and themes they emphasized in the course.1 As they grappled with the place of political, social, economic, and cultural history in their surveys and reflected on the issues of audiences and course objectives, they consistently affirmed their intentions to make the American history survey at the opening of the twenty-first century implicitly, if not explicitly, multicultural. While often eschewing the word itself, they deliberately constructed their offerings in ways that addressed the diverse populations that constitute "the American nation."
Now at the end of our term as editors, we return to thinking about the teaching of American history surveys, intentionally plural here, for this time we begin not with the emphasis on unum but on e pluribus. What happens when we make a group other than straight, white, Euro-Americans the primary focus of a survey? What is the result when we move the distinctive histories of African Americans, Latinos/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Lesbian/Gay people from margin to center? How does such teaching change our perspective on the relationship of previously underrepresented groups to our national narratives? . . .