cultural history

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/19/2021
  

  ‘If We Don’t Adapt, We Will Wither Away’: Louis Menand on the University

  "What we teach in the liberal arts — hermeneutics, history, and theory — are intended to help you do this. Professional schools don’t teach these things. You are not going to learn them anywhere else."

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• SOURCE: CNN
  4/12/2021
  

  Are you ready for the Roaring '20s?

  by Nicole Hemmer

  The end of the pandemic may portend a repeat of the "roaring 20s" a century later. But anyone anticipating a wild party should recall the nativism, racism, and rampant inequality of the era. Can the individual desire to live life to the fullest support a politics of inclusion and equality? 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/14/2021
  

  How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)

  by Evan Kindley

  Before lamenting the death of "freedom" as the highest social ideal, it's important to reckon seriously with what the term means outside of the context of the Cold War.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/1/2021
  

  Runaway American Dreams

  by Dennis M. Hogan

  What does it say about American liberalism that it's cultural tribune, Bruce Springsteen, is doing a corporate-sponsored podcast with the former President of the United States? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/26/2021
  

  Morris Dickstein, Critic and Cultural Historian, Dies at 81

  Morris Dickstein was a fierce advocate for the necessity of cultural criticism as part of public discourse, to elevate public understanding of art above the vagaries of hype and trend. 

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• 3/7/2021
  

  When Did America Stop Being Great?

  by Nick Bryant

  Nick Bryant began observing America as a 16 year old at the patriotic spectacle of the 1984 Olympics. His book traces the path from "Morning in America" to "American Carnage," fixing some blame but also seeking a way through. 

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• SOURCE: them.
  2/23/2021
  

  These Portraits Revolutionized the Way Queer Women Were Seen in the 1970s

  Joan E. Biren (known as JEB) published a collection of photographs of lesbians in 1979, a pioneering representation of queer women living openly. It will be reissued in March with retrospective essays. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/9/2020
  

  Jill Biden Is a Teacher. And She’s Not About to Change That

  Cultural historians Stephanie Coontz, Betty Boyd Caroli and Katherine Jellison discuss the historical roles occupied by First Ladies and the ways the position has and will change. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  12/9/2020
  

  What Attacks on Science Get Wrong

  by Andrew Jewett

  Reductive diagnoses of a "war on science" ignore the specific political and cultural stakes of controversies around vaccination, climate, or creationism. 

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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.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/8/2020
  

  America’s Most Hated Garment

  Atlantic writer Amanda Mull turns to fashion historians Marley Healy and Valerie Steele to place the growing social acceptance of sweatpants in a pattern of clothing standards changing in response to cultural influences and social conditions. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  12/8/2020
  

  How Americans Came to Distrust Science

  by Andrew Jewett

  Scientists and their supporters cannot overcome the current moment of hostility toward their profession and rejection of their expertise unless they confront the cultural history of skepticism toward science, in both conservative and liberal forms. 

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
  11/17/2020
  

  How to Recreate Your Lost Family Recipes, According to Historians and Chefs

  Chefs and historians of food cultures are working to build public understanding of the history of immigration and the African diaspora through knowledge of cooking and eating practices.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/18/2020
  

  A Mysterious Autograph Hound’s Book Is Up for Auction

  Jeweler Lafayette Cornwall collected the autographs of the most famous figures of his time, including Melville, Houdini, Edison, Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

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• 10/11/2020
  

  Fear of the "Pussification" of America: A Short Cultural History

  by Gregory A. Daddis

  The bizarre idea that COVID-19 can be defeated through manliness is one of the stranger cultural themes of our time, but it connects to a long history of anxiety about masculinity in a changing America that encourages violent and even self-destructive actions in the name of proving virility.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/12/2020
  

  How We Lie to Ourselves About History

  At its best, the "You're Wrong About" podcast transcends fact-checking and debunking to ask why so many of the stories we know are wrong, and why they persist nevertheless. 

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• 10/4/2020
  

  Andrew Rotter's "Sensual Empires: Britain and America in India and the Philippines"

  by Shannon Bontrager

  Andrew Rotter extends recent work in sensory history to the study of imperialism, documenting how British and American colonialism depended on the connection between sensory experience and racial and nationalist ideology.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  9/16/2020
  

  Stanley Crouch, Towering Jazz Critic, Dead at 74

  Crouch's criticism pulled no punches, and tackled big questions about the relationship between race and art in American music. He became an influential and controversial figure in the popular history of jazz as a consultant to Ken Burns's documentary.

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• SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
  9/9/2020
  

  The Interdisciplinarity and Influence of Alan Trachtenberg

  by Jennifer Giuliano and Lauren Tilton

  "The need to interrogate, understand, and even disrupt how we see images is a part of Trachtenberg’s enduring legacy that becomes more important as researchers are distanced from physical archives." The work of Alan Trachtenberg in developing historical methodologies for understanding images is crucial for historians' ability to speak to current affairs.