Historians/History

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• 1/29/2023
  

  "Cut His Head Off if Necessary"—The Flimsy, Politically-Driven "Peace" Nixon Made in Vietnam

  by James D. Robenalt

  Months after inflicting a brutal bombing campaign on North Vietnam to push them to the negotiating table in Paris, Richard Nixon pressed the South to accept a deal that doomed their survival, in order to claim the mantle of peacemaker for himself. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  With Academic History in Crisis, can Departments Pivot to Reach Interested Audiences?

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Americans don't actually hate history; they often begin to appreciate it after their undergraduate years and outside of the classroom. Does this point in a possible direction for securing the future of the profession? 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Teach the History Behind "Emancipation" with the Primary Sources

  by Alan J. Singer

  Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's "Emancipation" has rediscovered the life of an enslaved man variously called Peter or Gordon, who had been made famous through an 1863 photograph. Here's how history teachers can use the primary records of his life to accompany the film. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 

• 
• 12/11/2022
  

  How Should Popular Culture Convey History?

  by Walter G. Moss

  A recent plot point in Netflix's "The Crown" was based on a falsification of historical events. Historians who want to influence public knowledge of history need to be able to match the narrative appeal of television with a commitment to telling the truth. 

• 
• 12/4/2022
  

  Farewell, Brother Staughton

  by Carl Mirra

  Staughton Lynd was always in the trenches fighting for a better world, and for that he remains a “admirable radical” and, for that matter, a beautiful person.

• 
• 11/13/2022
  

  "Divisive Concepts" Bans Will Undermine Teaching Some of the Values Conservatives Claim to Uphold

  by John Marot

  The story of Frederick Douglass, to single out one prominent abolitionist, is "divisive" in the sense that students engaging with it will find echoes of values claimed by both left and right. That's why this history must be taught. 

• 
• 11/13/2022
  

  A Hundred Years On, Tutankhamun's Alleged Curse Still Captivates

  by Gill Paul

  The fevered belief that visitors to Tutankhamun's tomb (and their families) were cursed became a media phenomenon in 1922, but popular culture from the Bible to Victorian serial stories and stage plays had already linked mummies and the supernatural. Today, curses persist alongside conspiracy theories to help ease the randomness of tragedy.

• 
• 12/4/2022
  

  How Ambassador Joseph Grew Tried to Prevent the Pacific War

  by Steve Kemper

  Caught between Japanese militarism and the State Department's inflexibility, Joseph C. Grew worked for a decade as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan to try to avert a war he saw looming long before Pearl Harbor. 

• 
• 11/6/2022
  

  The Schlesinger Diaries—A Gift to Historians that Keeps Giving

  by Rafael Medoff

  The late historian's diaries highlight discrepancies between Schlesinger's public defenses of Franklin Roosevelt and his private knowledge of FDR's attitudes toward Jews and positions on the Holocaust. 

• 
• 10/23/2022
  

  The Salem Trials Challenge Us to Resist Moral Panic and Suspicion

  by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

  The Salem Witch Trials have been a perennial subject of fascination. A new exhibition challenges us to think about the potent mix of moral panic and social suspicion that drove accusations in Salem as a caution for ourselves today. 

• 
• 9/25/2022
  

  Anne Frank's Next Diary Entries

  by Bernice Lerner

  When I was a teenager, I imagined that Anne Frank was at my mother’s 15th birthday party. After all, they were the same age and they were both in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. How did I arrive at such a phantastic conflation?

• 
• 9/4/2022
  

  Society and Historical Memory: Six Common Ways People Relate to the Past

  by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

  Although historians are trained to think of the past in particular and disciplined ways, understanding how people en masse understand the past is also vital because these understandings—inaccurate as they often are—are vital and embody important information about their hopes and fears.

• 
• 8/28/2022
  

  The Personal is Critical: How Should Early Americanists Think of David McCullough as a "Gateway" to History?

  by Rebecca Brenner Graham

  Historians' tributes to David McCullough underscore the need to respect popular "gateways to history" but to also find gateways without gatekeeping. 

• 
• 8/21/2022
  

  Ultimately, David McCullough Succeeded by "Writing the Book I Wanted to Read"

  by Cary Heinz

  When the author loaned his father a copy of McCullough's Truman biography, "he not only read it, but loaned it to enough people that I eventually got it back with the book’s spine split in half," a testament to his narrative gifts.

• 
• 8/14/2022
  

  Remembering David McCullough Off the Page, as a Champion of Preservation

  by Richard Moe

  Having known the late David McCullough through his work advocating historic preservation, the author says McCullough lived a maxim of John Adams he often quoted: while he achieved success, he was more driven to work to deserve it.

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  A Primary Source Shows the Connection Between 1920s Flappers and Social Media Youth Organizers Today

  by Jason Ulysses Rose

  While youth are often dismissed as frivolous, their media often reveal engagement, creativity, and wisdom that ther political elders would be wise to heed – in the 1920s as today. 

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  For 38 Years of American History, There Has Been No Vice President

  by Cary Heinz

  The frequency with which the vice presidency has been vacant shows the historical insignificance of the office. 

• 
• 7/31/2022
  

  Collegiality, Interdisciplinarity, and the Historian's Work

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Universities should encourage, and scholars should embrace, opportunities for collegial cooperation that encourage the lowering of the barriers to cross-disciplinary conversations. Both the researcher and the university will benefit. 

• 
• 7/31/2021
  

  Interview: Joyce Berkman on the Value of History and the Historian's Mindset

  by Erik Moshe

  “It’s much better to develop one’s mental toolbox, one’s skills, rather than necessarily master huge bodies of knowledge.”