Put simply, world history is macrohistory. It is transregional, transnational, and transcultural. Although it is important for students of world history to have a deep and nuanced understanding of each of the various cultures, states, and other entities that have been part of the vast mosaic of human history, the world historian stands back from these individual elements in that mosaic to take in the entire picture, or at least a large part of that picture. Consequently, the world historian studies phenomena that transcend single states, regions, and cultures, such as cultural contact and exchange and movements that have had a global or at least a transregional impact. The world historian also often engages in comparative history, and in that respect might be thought of as a historical anthropologist. World history is not, therefore, the study of the histories of discrete cultures and states one after another and in isolation from one another. It is also not necessarily global history. That is, world history is not simply the study of globalization after 1492. As long as one focuses on the big picture of cultural interchange and/or comparative history, one is a practicing world historian. Therefore, for example, a number of noted world historians focus on travel and cultural exchange within the vast premodern Islamic World. Others study the exchange of goods, ideas, flora, and fauna across the so-called Silk Road that criss-crossed Eurasia from roughly 200 BCE to about 1350 CE. Others concentrate on comparative holy wars both within and outside of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism Christianity, and Islam. Still others have chosen to study in depth the global or transregional impact of single items or classes of items, such as the development and use of fire arms across the world from antiquity to the present or the significant roles that such apparently humble items as cotton and codfish have played across the vast span of human history. Given the current pandemic of AIDS and the ever-present fear of new pandemics, the role of disease in human history has also become an important and timely topic of study and teaching. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the World History Association, founded 26 years ago and with an international membership of 1500 teachers and scholars from 32 nations around the globe, is the leading learned society in the world for the promotion of world  history teaching and scholarship. The WHA has been in the forefront of world history pedagogy, with its support of the Advanced Placement World History curriculum (a curriculum crafted by members of the association), its sponsorship of World History Connected, an e-journal aimed primarily at K-12 teachers of world history but also used to advantage  by collegiate and university instructors, and the “Teaching Forum,” a regular feature of the WHA’s semi-annual World History Bulletin. A link to World History Connected and archived issues of the World History Bulletin are available at the WHA’s web site www.thewha.org. Additionally, a number of WHA members annually offer a variety of institutes and workshops throughout the USA and beyond aimed at assisting instructors at every level to master the art of teaching world history. Likewise, since its inception, the WHA has promoted world history research at all levels. Its award-winning Journal of World History publishes in its quarterly issues articles of cutting-edge scholarship. The World History Bulletin has long served as a medium for research papers by students and essays by more advanced scholars that are prolegomena to further research. Both journals also review the most recent literature in the field, namely learned monographs, books aimed at a general audience, and textbooks. Through its annual prize for the best world history book, regardless of intended audience, and its Student Paper Prize Competition, which awards substantial cash prizes to the best undergraduate and graduate-level research papers in world history, the WHA also fosters and rewards excellence in world history scholarship as practiced by historians at all stages of their development. Needless to say, many members of the WHA are prolific and respected scholars in the field, as well as writers of numerous world history textbooks. Not to be overlooked are the many master K-12 teachers who belong to the WHA, including Michele Forman, National Teacher of the Year in 2001 and a past-president of the WHA.

One of the WHA’s most important venues for promoting superior teaching and scholarship has been the annual conference, held over 3 ½ days, normally in late June. In recent years the conference has attracted 300 to 500 conferees and included over 100 panel and round table sessions, as well as several keynote addresses and often an accompanying workshop or institute for teachers. By tradition and because most of its members are from the USA and Canada, the WHA holds two consecutive annual conferences in North America and goes abroad every third year. Recent conferences have been held in London (2008), Milwaukee (2007), Long Beach (2006), and Ifrane, Morocco (2005). Other foreign hosts have included institutions in Spain, Italy, and Korea.   In 2009 the WHA met in Salem, Massachusetts (25-28 June), and in 2011 it will be hosted by Capital Normal University in Beijing. Additionally, in 2010 the WHA will launch the first in a series of annual symposia—cosponsored with an institute or university outside the USA and focused on a discrete issue in world history. The first of these, to be held in Istanbul in late October 2010 and co-hosted by Istanbul Sehir University, will center on “Byzantine and Ottoman Civilizations in World History.” This symposium will feature only 30 papers (as opposed to the roughly 300 offered at our annual conferences), which the two institutions expect to publish in book form. Indeed, for only the third time in the history of its conferences, the WHA has a contract to publish in book form selected and expanded papers from 2009 annual conference, which centers on the dual theme “Merchants and Missionaries: Trade and Religion in World History.”

The WHA will meet in San Diego, 24-27 June 2010, thanks to the generous patronage of several area colleges and universities. The two themes of the conference will be “Gender in World History,” and “The Pacific in World History.” In light of these two themes and as a prologue to the 2011 conference in Beijing, our themes will be “China in World History,” and “World History from the Center and the Periphery.”