Dr. Christopher J Levesque

Library staff developed a project to reclassify the Curriculum Materials Collection of a specialty library on the campus of a regional comprehensive university from its custom classification system derived from those developed during the 1960s and 1970s to Dewey Decimal Classification. While this system had the advantage of browsability for patrons who were familiar with previous use, its unusual nature made training patrons and staff challenging. The transition to Dewey is expected to ease training and use, enhance resource sharing, and allow student teachers to transfer their library skills to their new schools.

In my United States and World History survey courses, many students come at the topic of colonization during the 19th and 20th with the assumption that Europeans and Americans sought to bring the advantages of “civilization” to people in African and Asia. Even if students acknowledge Western powers sought to dominate colonized peoples to gain new markets or sources of raw materials, they often argue that colonizers brought “benefits” like roads, railroads, finished goods, education systems, and Christian missionaries. To counter this learned narrative, I approach imperialism and colonialism in multiple modules to show the continuity of the concepts involved as Europeans built these systems and how colonized people resisted their oppressors. This paper will demonstrate how instructors can use primary sources created by colonizers and colonized understood imperial projects in asynchronous online courses to help students develop a more nuanced understanding of colonization and decolonization through instructor and student-led discussions. It will also discuss ways in which educational technology can create more dynamic student interactions with the materials and each other as they explore European justifications for imperialism, the development of nationalist movements in Africa and Asia, and the methods of anti-colonial movements between 1914-1939. Connecting these ideas with the outbreak of the World Wars during the 20th century and the ways in which the United States and Soviet Union used, and were used by, peoples involved in anti-colonial struggles demonstrate how these concepts affected even those not living in colonial settings.