The Roundup Top Ten for October 28, 2022
We Discovered the Archive of a Sex Education Academy; Is its Value for Auction or Research?by Allison MillerWhat happened when a historian and an archivist-in-training tracked down the much-rumored but long unseen archives of a defunct institute for the study of sexuality? |
Returning Trump's Stolen Records Won't Make America's Archives Completeby Karin WulfWhile government archives, libraries and other repositories preserve a wealth of the records of the nation's past, the preservation of records is also a record of prejudice and exclusion. Historians must still work against the current to research the stories of women, the poor, and racial minorities. |
Disrupt the March of "Disruptive Innovation"by Kevin GannonThe economy of innovation and publicity in higher education often rewards people who claim credit for ideas over the people who work to develop, test, and implement them. Academia needs a collaborative model of innovation. |
When Abortion is Criminalized, Can Juries Nullify the Law?by Sonali ChakravartiInevitably, a health care provider will be prosecuted under one of the post-Dobbs abortion laws passed by the states. When this happens, will juries be informed by their predecessors who refused to convict defendants charged under the Fugitive Slave Act? |
The Freedman's Bank Forum Obscures the Institution's Real Historyby Justene Hill EdwardsVice President Kamala Harris's recent remarks at the forum enlisted the Freedman's Bank to celebrate public-private partnerships between banks and minority communities. The real history of the Freedman's Bank shows why public-private partnerships and moral uplift are inadequate to promote financial equity. |
Partisan Politics on a State Standards Revisionby Stephen JacksonThe South Dakota Department of Education discarded the recommendations of a work group of scholars, educators and elected officials in favor of a second group appointed by the governor, including political allies and an emeritus professor from Hillsdale College, seriously undermining rigor in the state social studies curriculum. |
Screaming Past Each Other at Christmas: Debating the End of the Vietnam Warby Ryan ReftIn December 1972 the United States launched a massive bombing campaign, notionally to force the North back to the bargaining table and secure an "honorable" peace. The fierce debate between Anthony Lewis and Robert Conquest over the merits of that reasoning would resonate for years. |
Doctors Who? The Radical History of DIY Transitionby Jules Gill-PetersonAs trans people's access to the medical system is under attack by law and political rhetoric, it may be necessary to revisit the history of trans women taking their gender transitions into their own hands. |
Against Queer Presentism—How Literary Studies Neglects the Archiveby Colton ValentineLGBTQ writers in today's literary world too often operate on the presumption that they are the first to experience queerness openly, making their own experiences of repression seem universal and transhistorical, and effacing older fictional and critical voices. |
Sam Adams: The Sock-Puppet Propagandist of Revolutionby Stacy Schiff`The journalistic standards of the day meant that the patriotic agitator saw no ethical reason not to publish inflammatory essays under multiple aliases. |