Historians/History

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• 11/13/2022
  

  "Divisive Concepts" Bans Will Undermine Teaching Some of the Values Conservatives Claim to Uphold

  by John Marot

  The story of Frederick Douglass, to single out one prominent abolitionist, is "divisive" in the sense that students engaging with it will find echoes of values claimed by both left and right. That's why this history must be taught. 

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• 11/13/2022
  

  A Hundred Years On, Tutankhamun's Alleged Curse Still Captivates

  by Gill Paul

  The fevered belief that visitors to Tutankhamun's tomb (and their families) were cursed became a media phenomenon in 1922, but popular culture from the Bible to Victorian serial stories and stage plays had already linked mummies and the supernatural. Today, curses persist alongside conspiracy theories to help ease the randomness of tragedy.

• 
• 11/6/2022
  

  The Schlesinger Diaries—A Gift to Historians that Keeps Giving

  by Rafael Medoff

  The late historian's diaries highlight discrepancies between Schlesinger's public defenses of Franklin Roosevelt and his private knowledge of FDR's attitudes toward Jews and positions on the Holocaust. 

• 
• 10/23/2022
  

  The Salem Trials Challenge Us to Resist Moral Panic and Suspicion

  by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

  The Salem Witch Trials have been a perennial subject of fascination. A new exhibition challenges us to think about the potent mix of moral panic and social suspicion that drove accusations in Salem as a caution for ourselves today. 

• 
• 9/25/2022
  

  Anne Frank's Next Diary Entries

  by Bernice Lerner

  When I was a teenager, I imagined that Anne Frank was at my mother’s 15th birthday party. After all, they were the same age and they were both in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. How did I arrive at such a phantastic conflation?

• 
• 9/4/2022
  

  Society and Historical Memory: Six Common Ways People Relate to the Past

  by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

  Although historians are trained to think of the past in particular and disciplined ways, understanding how people en masse understand the past is also vital because these understandings—inaccurate as they often are—are vital and embody important information about their hopes and fears.

• 
• 8/28/2022
  

  The Personal is Critical: How Should Early Americanists Think of David McCullough as a "Gateway" to History?

  by Rebecca Brenner Graham

  Historians' tributes to David McCullough underscore the need to respect popular "gateways to history" but to also find gateways without gatekeeping. 

• 
• 8/21/2022
  

  Ultimately, David McCullough Succeeded by "Writing the Book I Wanted to Read"

  by Cary Heinz

  When the author loaned his father a copy of McCullough's Truman biography, "he not only read it, but loaned it to enough people that I eventually got it back with the book’s spine split in half," a testament to his narrative gifts.

• 
• 8/14/2022
  

  Remembering David McCullough Off the Page, as a Champion of Preservation

  by Richard Moe

  Having known the late David McCullough through his work advocating historic preservation, the author says McCullough lived a maxim of John Adams he often quoted: while he achieved success, he was more driven to work to deserve it.

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  A Primary Source Shows the Connection Between 1920s Flappers and Social Media Youth Organizers Today

  by Jason Ulysses Rose

  While youth are often dismissed as frivolous, their media often reveal engagement, creativity, and wisdom that ther political elders would be wise to heed – in the 1920s as today. 

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  For 38 Years of American History, There Has Been No Vice President

  by Cary Heinz

  The frequency with which the vice presidency has been vacant shows the historical insignificance of the office. 

• 
• 7/31/2022
  

  Collegiality, Interdisciplinarity, and the Historian's Work

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Universities should encourage, and scholars should embrace, opportunities for collegial cooperation that encourage the lowering of the barriers to cross-disciplinary conversations. Both the researcher and the university will benefit. 

• 
• 7/31/2021
  

  Interview: Joyce Berkman on the Value of History and the Historian's Mindset

  by Erik Moshe

  “It’s much better to develop one’s mental toolbox, one’s skills, rather than necessarily master huge bodies of knowledge.”

• 
• 7/24/2022
  

  Kentucky Fried Vice President?

  by Cary Heinz

  Despite his advanced age, could chicken entrepreneur Colonel Harland Sanders have been an effective running mate for George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign? Would he have been the ultimate celebrity politician?

• 
• 7/24/2022
  

  At 75th Anniversary, What Can Anne Frank's Diary Teach Today's Teens?

  by Naomi Yavneh Klos

  A project that trains middle school student docents to lead peer discussions of Anne Frank's diary unlocks the power of empathy and experience to impart lessons about the Holocaust and about the broader concerns of human dignity and security for adolescents strained by the pandemic, violence, and identity-based demonization. 

• 
• 6/19/2022
  

  Watergate at 50: Did Kennedy Loyalists Squelch a 1968 "October Surprise" that Could Have Beaten Nixon?

  by James H. Barron

  Did Democratic party insiders bury the story of Richard Nixon receiving campaign funds from the Greek military junta because they disliked the Greek exile journalist who broke the news? 

• 
• 6/19/2022
  

  Clearing the Name of a Horse Blamed for Near-Defeat at Waterloo

  by Stephen Dando-Collins

  A failed cavalry attack nearly doomed Wellington at Waterloo. For years, Major General William Ponsonby's Irish horse was blamed to deflect from the tactical mistakes of human officers. 

• 
• 6/12/2022
  

  As an Island, Britain Became a Stage for Roman Politicians

  by Richard Hingley

  The conquest of Britain mattered to Roman emperors not for the island's strategic significance, but because it signaled a ruler's mastery of the ancient deity Oceanus and thus his worthiness in domestic politics. 

• 
• 5/22/2022
  

  Samuel Eliot Morison's 1950 Address Still Has Lessons About Subjectivity (Though Not All He Intended)

  by Bruce Dearstyne

  Addressing the AHA in 1950, Morison made a case that historians' authority depended on their detachment from the political controversies and cultural trends of their day; the advice can be valuable today if we also recognize Morison himself practiced it imperfectly.

• 
• 5/22/2022
  

  Jane Stanford's Murder Shows the Moral Vacuum of Gilded Age Fortune and Philanthropy

  by Richard White

  Jane Stanford's murder by poisoning in 1905 was part of a long chain of inequities and moral abdications that attended the great Gilded Age fortunes at every step, from their accumulation to their dispersal as philanthropy.