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  • SOURCE: The Hill
    12/23/2020

    Democracy, History and the Presidential Records Act

    by James Grossman and Richard Immerman

    It's time to update the Presidential Records Act to clarify the kinds of materials that must be preserved and create real penalties for destroying them. 

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    12/15/2020

    Working With Death: The Experience of Feeling in the Archive

    by Ruth Lawlor

    A researcher of sexual assault against women by American troops in World War II confronted the problem that the archive captures only a traumatic event and leaves the human being affected in the shadows. 

  • SOURCE: Contingent
    12/9/2020

    How Spencer McBride Does History

    History Phd Spencer McBride describes his work on the Joseph Smith Papers project, which poses unexpected challenges to learn about the world of the LDS founder. 

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    12/1/2020

    Reckoning With Slavery: What A Revolt’s Archives Tell Us About Who Owns The Past

    by Marjoleine Kars

    Researching the history of the 1763-1764 Berbice slave rebellion demonstrated that key records for understanding slavery in the Americas are held in archives in Europe and written in the language of colonial powers, making the history of enslaved people difficult to access for their present-day descendants.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    12/1/2020

    The Struggle to Document COVID-19 for Future Generations

    by Pamela Ballinger

    Images of suffering have been powerful spurs to humanitarian action in history, but the process has the potential to reinforce messages of fault, blame, and separation. Assembling a visual archive of the age of COVID must avoid those traps to be useful in the future. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    11/16/2020

    Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

    by Jill Lepore

    Reckoning with the Trump adminstration's actions and assigning moral or criminal sanction to any misdeeds will probably be compromised by the destruction or failure to maintain presidential records. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/17/2020

    The Women Behind the Million Man March

    by Natalie Hopkinson

    Community archives such as the District of Columbia’s are critical interventions into the omissions of history. This one, like others, makes clear that behind every great feat in the public record lies an untold story of the unsung foot soldiers, architects, analysts and fixers — and these are often women.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/8/2020

    Library of Congress Acquires Archives of the National Woman’s Party

    The preservation and archiving of the NWP's documents was complicated by the fact that its rival, the National American Woman Suffrage Association struck a deal with the Smithsonian forbidding the museum from including the NWP or Alice Paul in any exhibition on suffrage.

  • SOURCE: Public Seminar
    9/10/2020

    Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?

    by Thomas A. Foster

    A lawsuit demands that Harvard University give custody of famous images of enslaved men and women--taken without consent by a biologist seeking to demonstrate white supremacy-- to the subjects' descendents. A Howard University historian agrees, putting the images in context of other intimate violations endured by enslaved persons.