Objects and Images

offer a window into the past, providing both context for, and critique of, the history we teach.

This section is currently under construction. More objects will be added soon.

All Objects

August 24, 2024

Cage Crinolines

Everything Has a History

The Everything Has a History section in Perspectives on History provides a deep descriptive dive into a single object (broadly construed) and its history. These pieces can serve as a jumping-off point for classroom discussion.

Paper filled with lines of written Latin text

November 30, 2023

Incomplete Paperwork
Yellow-painted brick building next to a grass lawn with bushes and pink flowers

October 26, 2023

The Ross House Slave Quarters
A faded box cover for a Johnny Horizon Environmental Test Kit. A red title bar gives the product’s name next to the face of a man in a cowboy hat. Three vertical images show children engaged in using the kit with the titles “Test the Air,” “Test the Water,” and “Pollution?”

September 28, 2023

Johnny Horizon Environmental Test Kit
A quartered pomegranate rests on a bed of whole fruits.

April 27, 2023

Pomegranate Husk Reliquary
A large Z in the color of the St. George’s Ribbon on the front of a municipal culture center in Russia.

March 29, 2023

St. George’s Ribbon
A black and white photo of a small cottage captioned as “Monroe’s ‘Cabin Castle’—Ash Lawn, Charlottesville, Va.

February 27, 2023

The Ghost of Ash Lawn

Teaching Things: Toolkits

Teaching Things offers a range of entry points to bringing material culture into the classroom. In some lesson plans students consider objects alongside the visual and textual sources with which they are more familiar.

Access the Toolkits