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I can relate to Mike Halliburton's students. Throughout my studies, I went to one class to learn about Greek art, to another to learn about Greek history, to another to learn about Greek literature, and yet another to learn the Greek language. I suppose my profs figured that I was making the connections between all these elements on my own . . .but I wasn't. Not until I began teaching! I surprise myself sometimes when all of a sudden I see a connection between a statue of Democritus and his speeches. But the connections are there, and we must encourage our students (explicitly) to make those connections. For my purposes, I don't have a problem discussing women's history within the "established" chronologies. I use these chronologies simply as a framework for organizing information - for making connections. Most of our history/humanities courses are based up primary source reading. No doubt, it is more difficult than picking up a textbook and memorizing names and dates; but the students find this challenge much more interesting and meaningful. Furthermore, since I have been following the other conversation on history curricula with some interest - I always try to make history relevant to contemporary issues; I would challenge anyone who said history wasn't relevant to contemporary issues. In this regard, I recommend anyone teaching Greek and Roman classes to read Bernard Knox's BACKING INTO THE FUTURE (WW Norton, 1994). shari saunders coordinator, humanities athabasca university
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