Historians/History 
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3/7/2021
Was Madison Mistaken?
by Carl Pletsch
The divisive Trump years have called the wisdom of the Framers into question, but the author contends that James Madison in particular anticipated how a republic would be challenged by partisanship and designed one that could withstand that challenge (he just never claimed it would be easy).
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3/7/2021
The History Behind Demands for "Trial by Combat"
by Eric Jager
A call for "trial by combat" may seem desperate or insane, but may also hint at a desire for a clear, definitive verdict when truth proves elusive. A medievalist reconstructs the world that allowed the last legal, judicial duel.
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2/28/2021
History and Film: Reflections on Konchalovsky’s “Dear Comrades!”
by Walter G. Moss
Andrei Konchalovsky's film "Dear Comrades" examines the struggles of ordinary people in the Soviet Union to find truth amid ideology and fear.
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2/28/2021
An Unwanted Journey "Home": Black American Internees in World War II Europe
by Eve Brandel
"Living in Europe in the interwar years, Black Americans enjoyed freedoms denied them at home, but, ironically, America’s entry into World War II meant arrest and internment for those who had not left in time."
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2/28/2021
Twenty Years Ago, Rioters Tried to Stop a Presidential Vote Count – and Succeeded
by Robert Brent Toplin
On November 22, 2000 a mob succeeded in deciding a presidential election.
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2/28/2021
Photography Always Needed the Presidents
by Cara Finnegan
In the 1840s, the new technology of photography staked its place in the culture as an authoritative, reliable recording of events through the creation of images of the presidents or, in the case of George Washington, pictures of pictures of the presidents.
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2/28/2021
A Ghost of Galileo in the English Civil War
by John Heilbron
An obscure English painting containing an image of Galileo's "Dialogues" launches a deep consideration of the political and intellectual stakes of free inquiry during the English Civil War.
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2/28/2021
The Original Storming of the Capitol
by Stephen Dando-Collins
The January 6, 2021 siege of the Capitol in Washington DC has eerie parallels with a much earlier event, the AD 69 siege of the Capitoline Mount in Rome.
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2/21/2021
Who Deserves Credit for Inventing Vaccination? And Why Does it Matter Today?
by John Rhodes
Historical honesty requires acknowledging the African and Asian inoculation practices that preceded and enabled Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine. Telling this story more broadly might also encourage vulnerable communities of color to embrace the COVID vaccine.
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2/21/2021
"Hamilton" and Politics Today
by Donald J. Fraser
The phenomenally successful "Hamilton" takes some liberties with its subject, but it still offers some valuable perspective on our politics today.
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2/21/2021
Advice to POTUS 46 from POTUS 1
by David O. Stewart
The author of a recent political biography of George Washington wonders how the first president would guide the most recent one.
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2/14/2021
King’s Final Book: Both Political Roadmap and Passionate Sermon
by Fred Zilian
As Black History Month unfolds amid an atmosphere of crisis and division like that which prevailed in 1968, it's worth revisiting Martin Luther King's publication that year of "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" – a call for reordering national priorities toward justice through politics and for renewed spiritual and ethical dedication to shared humanity.
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2/14/2021
A Lesson Unity and Renewal: George Washington and the Building of the Capital City
by Robert P. Watson
The decision to create a national capital city and the execution of the plan was an underappreciated legacy of George Washington's leadership and a key force uniting a fragile new nation.
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2/7/2021
Not the First Mob Attack on the Government in D.C.
by Stan M. Haynes
An angry mob threatened John Tyler and his family in the White House and burnt him in effigy on the grounds after he vetoed the Whig Party's bill for a second Bank of the United States in 1841, leading Congress to authorize a night police patrol for the District of Columbia.
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2/7/2021
Young Du Bois in Germany: On the “Great Socialistic State of the Day"
by Helmut Smith
As graduate student visiting imperial Germany in 1892, W.E.B. Du Bois was shaped by observations of social welfare policy and experiences of social acceptance that contrasted dramatically with Gilded Age and Jim Crow America.
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2/7/2021
Who Can Claim to be the United States’ First University?
by Tom McSweeney, Katharine Ello and Elsbeth O'Brien
New documentary evidence shows that the College of William and Mary was chartered as a university in 1693, making it the first university in the colonies. The story reflects how the sectarian strife of England in the seventeenth century helped Anglican W&M and harmed Puritan Harvard.
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1/31/2021
Poverty, Politics and Pandemic: The Plague and the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381
by Alfred Thomas and Peter Rutland
Seen in a historical context of pandemic-induced paranoia, antisemitic conspiracy, and broad-based resentment, the English rebels start to look less like the innocent victims of tyranny and more like the Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol.
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1/31/2021
Democracy, Violence, and the Legacy of the American Revolution
by David W. Houpt
Although many of the Capitol rioters claimed to defend the Constitution, their actions reflect ideas derived from the Revolutionary period that the people have the right to resist tyranny by force. The Constitution sought to check that impulse by establishing a representative republic and a cultural bargain to live by the results of elections, but the two ideas have never been resolved.
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1/31/2021
Hidden in Plain Sight: History Teaching Needs to Take Advantage of Art and Material Culture
by Elizabeth Stice
"Where there is passion, people will pursue the past. A sneakerhead can tell you about the innovations in Air Jordans over the years and oftentimes quite a bit about the economic and cultural context of each shoe. Art and material culture can lead people to their own study of the past."
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1/24/2021
"Hands Off Until He Was Safe Over": David Reynolds Urges Biden to Look to Lincoln
by James Thornton Harris
Historian David S. Reynolds recently published Abe: Abraham Lincoln and his Times, a cultural biography that shows how the 16th president was shaped by the many social currents swirling in the young United States.
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