Skip to content

“Seventeen small jugs of soap”: Inviting Historical Imagination into the Classroom

A discussion of how to use creative essays in world history courses.

Bram Hubbell
Bram Hubbell
11 min read
“Seventeen small jugs of soap”: Inviting Historical Imagination into the Classroom

Aswan, Egypt is hot in the middle of the day in August. I had spent the summer of 2003 traveling overland from Istanbul to Cairo, and I was in Aswan for a few days. After visiting ancient Egyptian sites early in the morning, I escaped the midday heat by retreating indoors to read Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale. It was a book, unlike anything I had read before. I devoured history books throughout college and graduate school, but all those dense primary sources and scholarly monographs were nothing like this book. Ghosh writes prose that reads like fiction. He moves between discussing the past and the present, while also making many creative detours along the way. I wanted to find a voice like Ghosh had.

In 2003, I had just completed my second year teaching at Friends Seminary, and I was thinking a lot about what kind of history teacher I wanted to be. I knew that teenagers did not enjoy graduate-level history as I did. Some enjoyed learning about the past, but that doesn’t mean they wanted to read 300-page monographs or to write research papers. I wanted to find a way to get students excited about history without trying to squeeze a history graduate program into a high school class.

Abu Simbel temple south of Aswan, Egypt. I only have a handful of photographs from that 2003 trip. It was the last trip I went on without a digital camera. Photo by Bram Hubbell.
Abu Simbel temple south of Aswan, Egypt. I only have a handful of photographs from that 2003 trip. It was the last trip I went on without a digital camera. Photo by Bram Hubbell.

I also was not a fan of “projects.” I remember high school history classes where we made models of famous buildings. We built pyramids and Parthenons. In college, I once took a seminar on the Crusades, and the older White male professor was obsessed with military history. He brought in a working model of a trebuchet. I remember being utterly bored while most of the guys in the class wanted to play with the model. (There were no women in the class—I can’t imagine why.)

I guess most teachers reading this essay also have thought about how to share their passion for history with their students. We have all spent many nights designing and revising assignments to excite and engage our students. Somewhere between building historical models and writing research essays was my ideal assignment. I want to tell you the tale of how I found mine, and, like many good stories, there will be some jumping around in the timeline.


Related Posts

Members Public

“Looking For Hope, Betterment”: Global Migration, c.1920 - c.1960

Discussion of teaching global migration from 1920 to 1960

“Looking For Hope, Betterment”: Global Migration, c.1920 - c.1960
Members Public

“I Left My Land to Come to Demerara”: Global Migration, c.1830 - c.1920

Discussion of teaching nineteenth-century global migration

“I Left My Land to Come to Demerara”: Global Migration, c.1830 - c.1920
Members Public

“Longing for their Homes”: The Middle Passage and the Development of Modern Migration, 1700 to 1830

Discussion of teaching the Middle Passage as the start of modern migration

“Longing for their Homes”: The Middle Passage and the Development of Modern Migration, 1700 to 1830