Historians/History

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• 3/19/2023
  

  The Curious History of Ulysses Grant's Great Grandfather

  by John Reeves

  The military experiences of Noah Grant in the French and Indian War typified changes in military strategy in the Americas and cemented a family commitment to the military that drove his great grandson Ulysses. 

• 
• 3/12/2023
  

  How The Irish Saved Wellington at Waterloo

  by Brendan Farrell

  For centuries, the Irish provided manpower to the British military, never more notably than on June 18, 1815. 

• 
• 3/12/2023
  

  What Makes a Rebel Into a Hero?

  by Stephen Dando-Collins

  The same political process that made a hero out of the rebel Julius Caesar made villains out of his assassins, and burnished the reputations of some other rebels against the Roman Empire. 

• 
• 3/5/2023
  

  Why We Don't Remember Edith Galt Wilson as the "First Woman President"

  by Richard Bluttal

  While the First Lady ran the executive branch while concealing the extent of Woodrow Wilson's ill health after a stroke, her unofficial stewardship raises too many questions about secrecy and its consequences to be celebrated today. 

• 
• 2/22/2023
  

  Arctic Explorer, Nazi-Fighter, Iconoclast: Peter Freuchen's Case for "Most Interesting Man in the World"

  by Reid Mitenbuler

  A biographer contents that an unlikely celebrity from the early twentieth century should inspire people today to take risks and embrace a humanism that doesn't depend on loyalty to party or ideology. While this without-a-net kind of public discussion is increasingly rare today, it's what makes people interesting.

• 
• 2/12/2023
  

  Scientists: The Unsung Heroes of the American West

  by Elliott West

  From animal husbandry to epidemiology, the work of scientists was critical to America's conquest of the west, while the region also provided critical evidence in the debate over Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

• 
• 2/12/2023
  

  Recent Discovery Shows Women Scholars have been Hiding in Plain Sight of History

  by Joel Marie Cabrita

  Advances in imaging technology have revealed that an 8th century woman named Eadburg inscribed her name on the pages of a manuscript, claiming status as a woman of letters. The revelation also calls for more creative methods to find women scholars and assess their contributions. 

• 
• 2/6/2023
  

  How We Brought the Radical History of Pirates to Life

  by David Lester

  Visual artist David Lester discusses the creative process of developing a graphic version of the radical history of piracy, a collaboration with historians Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle. 

• 
• 1/29/2023
  

  "Cut His Head Off if Necessary"—The Flimsy, Politically-Driven "Peace" Nixon Made in Vietnam

  by James D. Robenalt

  Months after inflicting a brutal bombing campaign on North Vietnam to push them to the negotiating table in Paris, Richard Nixon pressed the South to accept a deal that doomed their survival, in order to claim the mantle of peacemaker for himself. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  With Academic History in Crisis, can Departments Pivot to Reach Interested Audiences?

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Americans don't actually hate history; they often begin to appreciate it after their undergraduate years and outside of the classroom. Does this point in a possible direction for securing the future of the profession? 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Teach the History Behind "Emancipation" with the Primary Sources

  by Alan J. Singer

  Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's "Emancipation" has rediscovered the life of an enslaved man variously called Peter or Gordon, who had been made famous through an 1863 photograph. Here's how history teachers can use the primary records of his life to accompany the film. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 

• 
• 12/11/2022
  

  How Should Popular Culture Convey History?

  by Walter G. Moss

  A recent plot point in Netflix's "The Crown" was based on a falsification of historical events. Historians who want to influence public knowledge of history need to be able to match the narrative appeal of television with a commitment to telling the truth. 

• 
• 12/4/2022
  

  Farewell, Brother Staughton

  by Carl Mirra

  Staughton Lynd was always in the trenches fighting for a better world, and for that he remains a “admirable radical” and, for that matter, a beautiful person.

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

• 
• 12/4/2022
  

  How Ambassador Joseph Grew Tried to Prevent the Pacific War

  by Steve Kemper

  Caught between Japanese militarism and the State Department's inflexibility, Joseph C. Grew worked for a decade as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan to try to avert a war he saw looming long before Pearl Harbor. 

• 
• 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?