Historians in the News 
This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/24/2023
Erika Lee and Carol Anderson on Myths and Realities of Race in American History
"The problem we have in the United States is that we use these myths as a way to diminish the humanity and the citizenship of large sectors of our population and to then craft policies based on myths."
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SOURCE: Substack
1/23/2023
Banished Podcast: Sunshine State's Descent Into Darkness
by Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Two historian podcasters evaluate the effort to politicize the history curriculum in Florida's K-12 schools and public colleges.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
1/26/2023
Caroline Dodds Pennock on The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe
by Karin Wulf
In contrast to the stock story of the "Age of Exploration," Indigenous Americans often traveled to Europe afte 1492. A new book looks to this history to examine the origins of a cosmopolitan world.
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/24/2023
Why Can't the Democrats Build a Governing Majority? (Review of Timothy Shenk)
by Kim Phillips-Fein
In an implicit response to Richard Hofstadter's finding of the continuity of a narrow "American Political Tradition," Timothy Shenk examines the ways that activists have occasionally disrupted the political order and convinced people to "take a leap into an unknown future."
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/25/2023
Victimhood and Vengeance: The Reactionary Roots of Christian Nationalism
by Linda Greenhouse
Three books offer illuminating and distressing insight on the eruption of Christian nationalism, a "deep story" in American cultural history that, when its adherents feel denied the power they expect, guides potentially violent vengeance.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
1/17/2023
Kidada Williams on The Reconstruction that Wasn't
In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/22/2023
How the Russian Jews Became Soviet
The novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the USSR to the US as a child, reviews Sasha Senderovich's "How the Soviet Jew was Made," a work that gives short shrift to neither the "Soviet" nor "Jewish" sides of the question.
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SOURCE: National Library of Medicine
1/22/2023
National Library of Medicine Announces 2023 History Talks
NLM History Talks promote awareness and use of NLM and related historical collections for research, education, and public service in biomedicine, the social sciences, and the humanities.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/23/2023
A Former Inmate Reviews an Oral History of Riker's Island
by John J. Lennon
"Leaving Rikers feels like a better chapter of your life is about to begin—even if that next chapter is a prison sentence."
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SOURCE: Modern Medieval
1/20/2023
What Can a Medievalist Teach us about Jacinda Ardern's Resignation and Women in Power?
Eleanor Janega joins Matthew Gabriele and David Perry to discuss the erasure of women in history and the recurrent disbelief about women doing public things today.
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SOURCE: Professor Buzzkill History Podcast
1/23/2023
David A. Bell Discusses "American Exceptionalism" with the Professor Buzzkill Podcast
"Dr. David Bell relates the long and strange history of the concept of “American Exceptionalism,” analyzing various interpretations of the phrase from the Puritan John Winthrop to President (and non-Puritan) Donald Trump."
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SOURCE: MSNBC
1/23/2023
Prof. Marvin Dunn: I was Teaching Before DeSantis was Born
Prof. Dunn discusses Florida's divisive concepts law and refusal to accept an AP course in African American Studies with MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid
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SOURCE: Yale Law School
1/23/2023
Legal Historian Reva Siegel on Dobbs
Legal historians have argued that the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment offer a more solid rationale for reproductive rights than the now-defunct right to privacy, though the court's majority has expressed skepticism while not directly ruling on the question.
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SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
1/22/2023
Eric Alterman on the Shifting Debate over Israel-Palestine in America
The writer discusses his conclusions about the evolution of the debate among American Jews about the nature of their relationship to Israel and the moral status of American policy.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/17/2023
Edward Larson Speaks to the New History Wars
by Jon Meacham
"To me, Larson’s unemotional account of the Republic’s beginnings confirms a tragic truth: that influential white Americans knew — and understood — that slavery was wrong and liberty was precious, but chose not to act according to that knowledge and that understanding."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/21/2023
Marvin Dunn: Florida Prof Defies New Laws to "Teach the Truth"
The Professor Emeritus at Florida International University says that he can't teach about the history of racist terrorism in the state without registering disgust for the actions of lynch mobs or offering clarity about the political purposes of the violence.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/13/2023
Three Novels Rooted in Forgotten Black Histories
Novels by Kai Thomas, Jamila Minnicks, and Nyani Nkrumah tell stories of Black life at the Canadian end of the Underground Railroad, an all-Black town in 1950s Alabama, and in post-Civil Rights Mississippi.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/17/2023
Parthenon Marbles' Fate Subject to Secret Talks
The British Museum and Greek government officials have acknowledged secret talks over the last two years about the repatriation of marbles taken by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in the early 1800s. The resolution is not yet known.
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SOURCE: 19th News
1/12/2023
Anastasia Curwood on New Shirley Chisholm Bio
By framing Chisholm as a person with a life history, Curwood elevates knowledge of the New York congresswoman from a "first major party candidate" to a political theorist and visionary.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/12/2023
Exxon's Scientists Predicted Warming for Decades While Exxon Executives Sowed Doubt
Predictions made by Exxon's own scientists beginning in the 1970s accurately tracked the actual progress of subsequent warming, and those scientists explicitly contradicted dismissals of anthropogenic climate change linked to fossil fuels.
News
- Erika Lee and Carol Anderson on Myths and Realities of Race in American History
- Banished Podcast: Sunshine State's Descent Into Darkness
- Caroline Dodds Pennock on The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe
- Why Can't the Democrats Build a Governing Majority? (Review of Timothy Shenk)
- Victimhood and Vengeance: The Reactionary Roots of Christian Nationalism