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It’s no accident that Marcelle Doheny’s world historycourse greets juniors with the provocative title When Strangers Meet. The brand new students enter the

classroom as cultural strangers with roots in the far cornersof the globe—Japan, China, Mexico, the United States, andIndia. Together they follow the threads of history as theyweave a rich tapestry that will become a backdrop for con-temporary times.

She is wrapping up weeks of guiding them through therise and reach of Islam, this day leading students to exploreits expansion into the Indian subcontinent, where two greatbut vastly different religions and cultures met in a rich andvolatile alchemy. Strangers meeting…through trade,through conquest, through the appeal of different faiths thatsometimes seemed more generous, at least in death. The results of that long ago commingling, she reminds them, arestaggering—Arabic numerals, the concept of zero, astron-omy, navigation, medicine—all eventually making theirway to Europe, then on to the Americas.

Doheny was part of a group of Andover history teach-ers who developed this entry-level history course more than10 years ago—before 9/11, she says with a touch of irony. Alarge share of its genius is how it informs the present. In addition to Islam, the yearlong course covers the rise of nation states in Europe and the early interactions of Euro-pean explorers and Native Americans. (Doheny admits thisis her favorite era and during this unit makes ample use ofthe Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and itswealth of artifacts—what she calls “unwritten history.”)

The course design’s intent, she says, was to present theprimary episodes and their cataclysmic impact on history

ON COURSE

Anything’s Possible When Strangers Meet

Murder, Mayhem, Math, and Medicine:

in an “overarching narrative that didn’t cover such an immense time frame that depth was sacrificed.” This is nowhirlwind survey of facts and dates, but an initiation into the multidimensional, interdisciplinary intellectual approach that is Andover. An additional unwritten agenda:to ensure that “students learn to think like historians—howto develop a thesis, how to use details to support that thesis, and how to find meaning in the information.”

In the halls of an academy that prides itself on its globalleadership objectives, this is the foundational course thatputs into the young scholar’s hands the tools to weave his orher own intellect and passion into life.

A British native, Doheny has taught history at Andover since 1992. At the October trustees’ meetings, shewas appointed to the Frederick Beinecke Foundation forTeaching in recognition of her dynamic, enthusiastic approach to the classroom. Dean of Faculty TembaMaqubela said in announcing the appointment, “This is ateacher’s teacher, a giant of the profession.”

Her mind is a restless one, always working on some newand unusual way of refracting contemporary life throughhistory’s prism. So stay tuned. A classical oboist, Doheny isdeveloping a new interdisciplinary course with the musicdepartment’s Christopher Walter that explores the rela-tionships of 20th century composers to totalitarianregimes—Shostakovich and Stalin, Wagner and Hitler,Copeland and the McCarthy era. It’s going to be called, appropriately, Out of Tune, yet another permutation of whatis possible when strangers meet.

—Sally Holm