social history

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/29/2020
  

  The Life in "The Simpsons" Is No Longer Attainable

  In the 1990s, "The Simpsons" drew humor by putting bizarre dysfunction in the context of middle class suburban banality. Today it's the idea of homeownership paid for by a stable single income that seems outlandish.

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• SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute
  12/9/2020
  

  From Fish House Punch to Bud Light: America’s Long, Complicated Relationship with Alcohol (Web Event, 12/17)

  To mark the centennial of Prohibition, please join AEI’s Kevin R. Kosar for a conversation exploring how alcohol has influenced America’s economy, politics, and culture.

• 
• 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 York Times
  8/4/2020
  

  Don’t Believe the Lie That Voting Is All You Can Do

  by Daniel Hunter

  Stop minimizing the work of movements.

• 
• SOURCE: Governing
  7/23/2020
  

  How Can Local Government Address Systemic Racism?

  Peniel Joseph, one of the nation’s leading civil rights scholars, has studied and written about the history of race and democracy. He has some ideas on how cities and urban areas can begin to dismantle racism.

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Re-stabilizing the Middle Class and the Poor: Lessons from the 1930s

  by David Stebenne

  For a long time it seemed as though the 1930s era of high unemployment was a kind of “great exception” in American history, but now it has appeared again, suddenly and unexpectedly, just as it did in the early 1930s. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  6/30/2020
  

  Why We Owe Gay Marriage to an Early Trans Activist

  by Eric Cervini

  Why isn't Sylvia Rivera a household name?

• 
• SOURCE: San Francisco State University
  6/22/2020
  

  Professor of History Marc Stein looks back at 50 years of celebration, resistance at LGBT pride parades

  The historian and author of “The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History” answers questions about the past, present and future of LGBT pride parades.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/15/2020
  

  The History of the “Riot” Report

  by Jill Lepore

  How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

• 
• SOURCE: CommonWealth
  6/7/2020
  

  Protesting the George Floyd Killing: A Moment or a Movement?

  Certain moments “hit a collective nerve,” said historian Heather Ann Thompson.

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/8/2020
  

  Using MLK to Quell Outrage Distorts His Legacy

  by Jeanne Theoharis

  King has much to say about our contemporary moment, about the persistence of police abuse and the power of disruption, which may account, at least partly, for why this aspect of his politics is considerably less recognized.

• 
• SOURCE: The Dispatch
  6/4/2020
  

  Ben’s Chili Bowl Founder on Civil Unrest—In 1968 and Today

  The iconic DC restaurant "became a safe and neutral space for people to meet when things were really hot elsewhere in the city,” says co-founder Virginia Ali.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  6/2/2020
  

  Trump Declared Himself the 'President of Law and Order.' Here's What People Get Wrong About the Origins of That Idea

  Historian Elizabeth Hinton's research suggests that this platform truly took hold under the Johnson administration.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/31/2020
  

  History, Right Now: Echoes of 1968, and Other American Years

  Historian Thurston Clarke describes the year 2020 as "a convergence of the greatest catastrophes of the past 100 years or so, all hitting us at once."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/23/2020
  

  The Many Faces of the ‘Wine Mom’

  Historian Lisa Jacobson explains that the "Wine Mom" meme is rooted in gender and middle class norms regulating women's obligations to their children (and women's desire for freedom from them).

• 
• SOURCE: Glasgow Herald
  5/25/2020
  

  Obituary: Dr Ian Macdougall, Historian who Recorded the Voices and Experiences of Working People

  MacDougall, who has died at the age of 86, was a historian with a deep affection for, curiosity in and understanding of the working men and women who are frequently overlooked when a country’s story is narrated.

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  5/4/2020
  

  “How Are We Going to Look Back on This Time?” Oral Historians Record Daily Life During COVID-19.

  As COVID-19 rages around the world, archivists, librarians, oral historians, and activists have spun up oral history projects to document their communities’ everyday experiences during an extraordinary social, political, cultural, and historical moment.

• 
• 4/26/2020
  

  Teaching During a Pandemic – a Century Ago

  by John Marsh

  In letters the author's grandmother wrote to her beau in the Army between 1918 and 1919, the flu was a constant subject. 

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• SOURCE: University of Washington History Department
  4/15/2020
  

  In Memoriam: William Rorabaugh

  William Rorabaugh, known to his colleagues as Bill, was a popular teacher and prolific scholar whose legacy will be felt for many years to come.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/7/2020
  

  How New Efforts Are Recovering the Stories of People Who Were Deleted From History

  by Rachel Lance

  For so many American families, lack of representation in paperwork might have otherwise led to a lack of representation in memory, but technology and crowdsourcing are finally bringing them out of the shadows.