World History Connected (ISSN 1931-8642), https://journals.gmu.edu/whc, has been an affiliate of the World History Association since 2003. While the submission of individual articles on any topic germane to world history are welcome at any time, the journal also invites papers suitable for a Forum, a set of 4 to 8 curated articles showcasing innovative research and the scholarship of teaching in the interdisciplinary field of world history.
This Call for Papers invites contributions to the Summer of 2024 issue’s Forum devoted to “World History in the Age of AI: Ethics, Pedagogy, and the Use of Large Language Models” Guest Edited by Jack Norton, Normandale Community College. Contributions may include archival research, fieldwork, and the scholarship of teaching (while WHC does not publish lesson plans, it does feature articles that are rooted in pedagogical analysis and data gathered from classroom activities, which may contain lesson plans and examples of student activities and exercises).
Submission of articles for this Forum should be received no later than Friday, March 1, 2024 at jack.norton@normandale.edu for consideration for publication in Summer, 2024 (see also below).
About the Forum
This issue’s Forum, entitled “The Ethics of using Large Language Models in World History Instruction” will be guest edited by Jack Norton. Our Forum will focus on how world history instructors attend to the ethical issues surrounding Large Language Models (LLM), such Open AI’s ChatGPT or Google Bard, in our pedagogies. Historians have long struggled to use tools and sources ethically. Who gets to use a source or tool to craft a history, and how is their use justified? The histories of Henrietta Lacks, the Elgin marbles, and the cultural heritage tool Mukurtu all foreground the ethical questions history instructors ask our students to consider.
How then may we place LLMs into historical context and advise our world history students on LLM usage? The ethical issues involved with LLMs as technology are well-reported, including privacy violations, high water usage and carbon production from LLM servers, and the mental health costs of low-paid content moderators who sort information too violently or sexually complex for the LLM. What’s more, LLMs struggle to do basic calculations, answer questions truthfully, or write accurately about the past with legitimate citations. Responding to LLM usage in the classroom, some research finds that “GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers.”
Even with these issues, world history instructors should not ignore LLMs as these tools produce content at such speed and with such coherence that even high failures rates will not deter students from exploring their usage. More importantly, students will face competition from LLMs in the jobs, which suggests an ethical obligation for instructors to prepare students for LLMs at work. This Forum invites articles that explore the ethics of AI usage in the world history classroom. Topics might include instruction on history of technology, labor, colonialism, language, disability, or the environment and the concomitant ethical issues that attend such histories. As well, the Forum invites articles that model novel world history pedagogies attending to LLMs grounded in the ethics of the discipline of history, such as how to evaluate credible sources, how to guide students towards productive uses of LLMs, how to encourage academic integrity in source usage and citations, or how to interrogate LLMs output for falsehoods as a stepping stone to broader understanding of how history is created.
Submission of Articles for the Forum
Submissions of articles for consideration or questions related to this Forum should be sent via email directly to its Guest Editor, Jack Norton (jack.norton@normandale.edu), with the subject line “WHC Submission,” followed by a last name and a short title or query. Prior to the submission of a prospective article authors are encouraged to consult the journal’s Submissions and Style Guide (https://journals.gmu.edu/index.php/whc/submission-guidelines), or risk possible delays in consideration. The journal, like all academic journals, reserves the right to decline to publish any submission.
Please note that due to the recent transition of WHC from the University of Illinois Press to George Mason University Press, World History Connected back issues may continue to appear at its former website (https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu) until the end of 2023, when all issues will be available on the new website. You can access the first George Mason University Press published issue (WHC 19.3) at https://journals.gmu.edu/whc or by searching for “World History Connected GMU.”
About World History Connected
World History Connected is a grant-supported, open-sourced, double-blind reviewed e-journal that annually reaches 1.85 million readers (scholars and practitioners who read more than two articles) and attracts six million visits to its website. It publishes Forums, individual articles, book reviews, special features (such as its “Interview with a World Historian”), and a list of books available for review. Please send any general inquiries with the subject line beginning “WHC” to:
Editor, Marc Jason Gilbert at hallgilbert@earthlink.net through December 31, 2023
Editor- Elect, Cynthia Ross at cynthia.ross@tamuc.edu beginning January 1, 2024
Book reviews are welcome via preliminary contact with the journal’s in-coming Book Review Editor, Gina Bennett, at gbennett@coker.edu beginning January 1, 2024.
The journal strives to serve all those devoted to research and teaching world history. Published reviews have judged it successful in achieving its dual goal in supporting and disseminating globally both archival research and the scholarship of teaching. Ideally, any work in world history can be made relevant in terms of both increasing our understanding of micro- and macro-historical processes, and also contributing to classroom instruction and curriculum development. It is a double-blind peer reviewed publication guided by world historians and educators devoted to growing a community of world historians by assisting prospective authors to reach the highest standards for accessible writing, referencing, and formatting, whether the article is, or is not, accepted for publication. Its editorial staff includes past presidents—and the current president-- of the World History Association as well as distinguished Advanced Placement and Master Teachers, who are all unpaid volunteers.
In addition to individual articles, book reviews, a list of books available for review, and “special” features such as interviews with world historians, the journal seeks Guest Editors who wish to create one of its curated topical sections (“Forums”) that help WHC keep as close as possible to the needs of its audience and developments in the field. The journal is published three times a year (Winter, Spring and Fall) and offers additional content through its social media editors, Angela Lee (amrsleehistory@gmail.com), Suzanne Litrel (suzannemlitrel@gmail.com), and Joe Snyder (jsnyderwvu@gmail.com).