The History Learning Project, a project developed by Indiana University faculty members to document and improve student learning in the discipline of history, is the subject of a feature article this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Faculty members from the Indiana University School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences are beginning newly funded projects to enhance the teaching of U.S. history in schools, thanks to grants from the U.S. Department of Education. The grants are each from the Teaching American History program, which the department describes as a program designed "to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of and appreciation for traditional U.S. history."

Over the past 20 years or so, scholars have delved deeply into the racial ideologies that became influential in the early 1900s and helped facilitate the rise of Nazi Germany. But has the pendulum swung too far? A conference this weekend at Indiana University Bloomington will examine the limits of the "racial state" model in explaining Germany's Third Reich and explore the role of other factors, such as nationalism and ethnic and class issues.

In its September 2009 issue, the Indiana Magazine of History offers five essays commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard C. Wade's seminal book in Midwestern and urban history, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790-1830.

The Journal of American History marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln with a special issue of Lincoln history and historiography. Historian Matthew Pinsker writes in a state-of-the-field essay that "there has never been a more active or creative period in Lincoln studies."

The Triennial Rural Women's Studies Conference at IU Bloomington will emphasize health and sustainability in rural communities and will involve those who face challenges every day.

A special issue of the Indiana Magazine of History includes articles from an Indiana University Bloomington conference on the controversial series of murals painted by artist Thomas Hart Benton for the Indiana Hall as part of the Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition in 1933.

An IU expert who has traveled extensively in Iran is available to discuss next week's inauguration of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term in office and the country's worst political turmoil since 1979.

We all have a mental picture of the sights that greeted European settlers when they first encountered the American West. But what about the sounds? In the June 2009 issue of The Journal of American History, historian Sarah Keyes describes how overlanders imposed their own aural environment on the native peoples and natural landscape as they crossed the continent from east to west.

As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators continue to take to the streets of Tehran, an Indiana University professor who has traveled throughout Iran continues to get reports from colleagues within the country, who indicate that Arabic-speaking militias are arriving in the country.

Indiana University Professor Jamsheed Choksy, a specialist on Iranian history and religions, who has traveled throughout Iran, is available for comments.

Brig. Gen. James B. Smith will be nominated as ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, President Barack Obama announced June 4. Smith received a Master of Arts degree in history from IU Bloomington in 1975.

John Hanson, an associate professor in the Indiana University Bloomington Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2009-10 academic year. Hanson will use the fellowship to complete a book, tentatively titled Islam, Schooling and the Public Sphere: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Ghana, West Africa.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Indiana University faculty members Dov-Ber Kerler and Jeffrey Veidlinger $267,000 to preserve and annotate oral histories they collected from Yiddish-speaking residents of Eastern Europe and make the material available to scholars, educators and the public.

Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov lived the life of a typical Russian merchant of the late 1700s and early 1800s, but with a major difference -- he wrote it all down. David L. Ransel, the Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, has used Tolchënov's detailed diary to produce a revealing book about a segment of Russian society that had been largely ignored by historians.

IU history professor Klaus Mühlhahn is the author of Criminal Justice in China: A History, published this month by Harvard University Press. The first comprehensive examination of the Chinese criminal justice system from late imperial times to the present, the book relies on unprecedented research in Chinese archives, including classified materials, and incorporates prisoner testimonies, witness reports and first-hand interviews.

In July 1937, women working in a WPA sewing room in Tampa, Fla., staged a sit-down strike. While short-lived and unsuccessful, the strike yielded lessons about issues of gender, race and labor in the New Deal era, says an article in The Journal of American History, published by the Organization of American Historians at Indiana University Bloomington.

The March 2009 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History leads with an article by Bloomington writer and cabinetmaker Nancy Hiller on the history of the Hoosier Cabinet. Hiller places the national success of the free-standing kitchen cabinets, hugely popular from the 1910s to the 1930s, within the context of the scientific homemaking movement and the rise of product marketing and sales techniques.

Carol E. Anderson, a leading historian of the international dimensions of the U.S. civil rights movement, will present the 2009 Paul V. McNutt Lecture on Tuesday, March 10, at Indiana University Bloomington. The Emory University professor will speak on "Allies of a Kind: India and the NAACP's Alliance to End Racial Oppression in and from South Africa, 1946-1951."

The Journal of American History has inaugurated series of quarterly podcasts, beginning with an interview of historian James Meriwether, whose article "Black Voters, Africa and the 1960 Presidential Election" appears in the December 2008 issue.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's failing health could present an even greater challenge to the next president than his diplomatic exploitation of his country's nuclear weapon's program, according to an Indiana University historian who has written extensively on the Asian nation.

The September 2008 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History leads off with an article on the little-known role played by bicyclists in the presidential election of 1896, which pitted Republican William McKinley against Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Author Michael Taylor argues that cyclists -- lobbying for good city streets and rural roads -- became a political force in the elections of the 1890s.

More than 200 experts who study indigenous languages spoken in Latin America will come to Indiana University's Bloomington campus today (August 14) through Saturday for the first biennial Symposium on Teaching Indigenous Languages of Latin America or STILLA.

More than a century's worth of scholarship on Indiana history is now available on a free, searchable Web site created by the Indiana University Digital Library Program and the Indiana Magazine of History.

Alex Tipei, a graduate student in history at Indiana University, is one of 44 Jacob K. Javits fellows named this month by the U.S. Department of Education. The fellowships are awarded to graduate students in the arts, humanities and social sciences.