This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
3-5-13
The long-planned Digital Public Library of America is set to make its public debut on schedule next month, with a two-day series of events, to be held April 18-19 at the Boston Public Library, and a new, high-profile leader at the helm. The DPLA announced on Tuesday that Daniel J. Cohen, a leading digital-humanities scholar, will be the project’s founding executive director.Mr. Cohen comes to the project from George Mason University, where he directs the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. In the announcement, John Palfrey, president of the DPLA’s Board of Directors, praised Mr. Cohen’s contributions to libraries and digital scholarship.
Source: Kenneth Pomeranz and James Grossman in AHA Today
3-4-13
Kenneth Pomeranz and James Grossman are the president and executive director of the American Historical Association, respectively.The American Historical Association has joined a group of individual distinguished historians in signing an amicus brief in US v. Windsor, a case before the Supreme Court contesting the validity of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). As is so often the case in legal contexts, the details can get lost in the swirl of broader issues and we want to clarify some important aspects of the AHA’s decision.The brief that the AHA has joined addresses strictly historical issues: in this case, how marriage has historically been regulated in the United States, and the purposes for which marriage has been thought to exist. In both matters, it replies, in part, to a brief by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives (“BLAG”).
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
3-4-13
Clifford M. Kuhn became the Oral History Association's first full-time executive director on January 1, at a time when the discipline of oral history is burgeoning because of digital advances, but also when it faces ethical and legal challenges.Mr. Kuhn, who is 60, is an associate professor of history at Georgia State University. He will continue to teach part time while leading the group, which since 1966 has supported the gathering and preservation of historical information via recorded interviews.A longtime oral historian, Mr. Kuhn has relied extensively on interviews for books, articles, and radio series about Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr., and Southern history and life. Using interviews and archival materials, he is working on a history of the life of Arthur F. Raper, a sociologist who studied sharecropper exploitation in the South in the mid-20th century....
Source: Der Spiegel
2-22-13
Historian Othmar Plöckinger argues that Adolf Hilter's time in the military facilitated his transformation into a murderous dictator. His new book traces how in the army Hilter acquired skills and an education that he would put to use during his later rise to power. What does a soldier do after his country has lost a war and he is left with nothing, has no education or vocational training, and no family and no friends? He remains a soldier.On Nov. 21, 1918, 10 days after the armistice, lance corporal Adolf Hitler reported for duty at his regiment's garrison in Munich. He was given free rations, a monthly wage of about 40 Marks and a heated place to sleep, an important concession that winter....
Source: MinnPost
2-22-13
In the annals of emancipation, Minnesota is recognized as one of the “free states.”But when author and historian Walt Bachman began digging into his family history, he uncovered substantial evidence that as late as the 1850s, slaves were kept by officers at Fort Snelling and Fort Ridgely, in full knowledge of — and even subsidized by — the government.When these slaves were sold to civilians, they continued to live in Minnesota under the bonds of slavery, and their children were born into slavery.“Slavery in the North was not tied to agriculture or industry, as it was in the South. They typically worked as house servants,” said Bachman.“In Minnesota, there were never large gangs of farm workers, or auction blocks. There weren’t those trappings of the worst forms of slavery,” he said. “But there is ample evidence of brutality towards slaves in Minnesota, including a slave who was whipped to death by her Army officer master. Slavery, wherever it was practiced, was a pernicious institution, and Minnesota was no exception.”...
Source: Kasterborous
2-28-13
With his laissez-faire attitude towards continuity you’d think that historians would share the same level of contempt for the Doctor as he has for archaeologists.But rather than being bitter about his stubborn refusal to confirm even the most commonly believed theory (just put us out of our misery: is the Voynich Manuscript just a shopping list?) Brit-born historian, scholar and presenter Simon Schama revealed that he absolutely loves the Doctor.Speaking to BBC America at the BBC Worldwide showcase, where he was fielding questions about his latest multi-part documentary The History of the Jews, the conversation became animated when talk turned to the Doctor’s upcoming anniversary:“I love Doctor Who!”...
Source: Emory University News
2-22-13
A group of graduate students at Emory University specializing in digital research in the humanities have created a new website that uses digital tools to analyze and compare the text of sermons delivered after Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Their project uses various digital text tools to map geographic and thematic patterns in the collection of 57 sermons, which reside in the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library of Emory's Robert W. Woodruff Library. The scholars are calling their project "Lincoln Logarithms: Finding Meaning in Sermons" and they hope it will become a model for the next wave of research in the humanities. "The [Lincoln] sermons are something we honed in on because we think the analysis we did could be helpful to a lot of researchers," says Sarita Alami, one of three graduate fellows in the library's Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC). "Nothing exists like this right now," says Alami of the online guide. "The sermons are a game piece for creating a guide for people who are interested in doing digital projects and don't know what tool to use or where to turn. We created an online map so that researchers can know what to try." ...
Source: The Way of Improvement Leads Home
3-2-13
Over at Religion in American History, Chris Cantwell, newly appointed Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, calls our attention to an April 2013 conference at Yale honoring the work of American historian Jon Butler. Presenters include James Bennett, Catherine Brekus, Stewart Davenport, Christopher Grasso, Alison Greene, Amy Koehlinger, Rachel Wheeler, and Molly Worthen. There will also be a toast from Harry Stout. The sessions have been crafted around Butler's seminal contributions to the field of American religious history. They are titled: "Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage" "Jack-in-the-Box Faith:?: The Religious Problem in Modern American History" "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction: "Awash in a Sea of Faith."...
Source: NYT
3-3-13
The author of “Nixon Agonistes,” “John Wayne’s America,” “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” “Reagan’s America” and, most recently, “Why Priests?” considers Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” “the best political writing of our time.”What was the best book you read last year?Peter Brown, “Through the Eye of a Needle.” Puts a stethoscope to the fourth through sixth centuries C.E.When and where do you like to read? Anywhere. Everywhere. In high school, I read in the stands through the school’s football and basketball games....
Source: National Endowment for the Humanities
2-28-13
WASHINGTON (February 28, 2013) — NEH Chairman Jim Leach today issued the following statement about the implications of sequestration on the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).“On Friday, March 1, nearly all federal agencies will have a portion of their funds reduced via a mechanism known as sequestration. By background, this situation arises from the terms of prior legislation that required Congress and the White House to agree on a balanced deficit reduction plan of a given magnitude. If an agreement could not be reached, an automatic, across-the-board reduction of funds —sequestration— was required to be implemented during this fiscal year. The President was expected to issue the sequestration order by January 2, 2013, but over the New Year’s holiday, Congress approved and the President signed legislation that postponed the automatic reductions until March 1.Preliminary estimates by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) indicate that sequestration will require a 5 percent reduction in funding for NEH during this fiscal year, which commenced last October 1 and ends this September 30th. Concerned for the prospect of sequestration, NEH has put in place since last fall constraints on program commitments and administrative costs. Further uncertainty, however, exists with the looming mid-year budget negotiations.
Source: NPR
3-1-13
The week's developments include a pope emeritus for the first time in six centuries, federal budget cuts seemingly designed by Sweeney Todd, and the visit by one of the NBA's all-time rebounders (Dennis Rodman) to the son of one of the world's greatest sportsmen (that would be North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, whose late father claimed to have shot five holes-in-one on his very first golf outing).And yet somehow, legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward thrust himself at the center of the news with his claim that he had been menaced by an unnamed White House official. That's serious stuff. Woodward has been getting under the skins of presidential administrations for four decades now....One close Woodward observer has little tolerance for this latest episode."Woodward was caught out in a lie when he represented Sperling's admonition as a threat," said Max Holland, author of Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat."But that misrepresentation is only the latest in a long list of prevarications that go all the way back to Watergate and the fabled Deep Throat. No other journalist would be allowed to get away with this kind of serial behavior."It's a self-inflicted wound. A great reporter Woodward may well still be. But his behavior has called into question his standing as a reliable narrator.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
2-27-13
Some 15 historians gave their backing to Mr Gove's proposals which will see schools teach more facts and events to ensure children develop what the Education Secretary calls a "connected narrative" of history.They wrote in the Times: “While these proposals will no doubt be adapted as a result of full consultation, the essential idea ... is a welcome one.”The new curriculum will see children taught, in chronological order, about key figures in British history that were dropped from the syllabus by the last Labour Government.Pupils will learn about events including the including the Norman Conquest, Henry II’s dispute with Thomas Becket, the Black Death, the Wars of the Roses, and execution of Charles I, the union with Scotland and the rise and fall of the British Empire....
Source: NYT
2-14-13
Nineteenth-century female historians with minimal formal education but ambition and numerous servants documented world events in ways that are still admired and quoted.Two new biographies cover female antiquarians who invented themselves and became famous but maddeningly did not preserve their own archives.Sarah Losh, a historian and self-taught architect in a northern English village, traveled around Europe taking notes about streetscapes and rituals. She designed clusters of school and religious buildings near her home in Wreay, partly based on ancient and medieval ruins that she visited. She destroyed much of her writings, but her brilliance was recorded in the remembrances of friends and relatives....
Source: WaPo
2-26-13
Education historian Diane Ravitch, the leading voice in the movement opposing corporate-based school reform, has for several years said she has no definitive opinion on the Common Core State Standards. Now she has come out against them, in this post, which appeared today on her blog....* * * * *I have thought long and hard about the Common Core State Standards.I have decided that I cannot support them. In this post, I will explain why.
Source: Kathryn Jean Lopez in the National Review
2-25-13
George Weigel’s new book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (Basic Books), seems destined to be a reference point in the papal interregnum that begins at 2 p.m., New York time on February 28, and well into the new pontificate. I caught up with Weigel, who has been in Rome since Ash Wednesday, to pose some questions about the conclave, the state of the Church, and the analysis of Evangelical Catholicism:KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: By Pope Benedict XVI publicly acknowledging problems inside the Vatican is he giving guidance to the cardinals gathering in Rome this week?
Source: Judicial Watch
2-25-13
(Washington, DC) – On February 12, 2013, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of author/historian Max Holland against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The suit challenges the withholding of Robert F. Kennedy’s records while he served as Attorney General, including “assassination records” relevant to the November 22, 1963 murder of his brother, former President John F. Kennedy. (Holland v. National Archives and Records Administration (No. 13-00185)). These records are currently under control of the Kennedy family under the auspices of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester,Massachusetts.
Source: Letter to NYT
2-25-13
Re “Scorecard for Colleges Needs Work, Experts Say” (news article, Feb. 14):
Source: The Atlantic
2-21-13
At some moment a few years after Jesus Christ died but before the second century began, someone made a brick on the island that would become the cornerstone of Great Britain. The area was controlled by Rome then, and known as Britannia and as the brick lay green, awaiting the kiln, a cat walked across the wet clay and left its footprints before wandering off to do something else. The clay was fired, the prints fixed, and the brick itself presumably became a piece of a building or road.Two thousand years later, a Sonoma State master's student named Kristin Converse was poking around the holdings of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Washington state. She was writing her thesis on the business and technology of brickmaking in Portlandia (known more formally as the Willamette Valley). A brick caught her eye. It was part of an odd group that was not of local origin. In one corner, there were the footprints of a cat. Where had this cat lived?
Source: Press Release
2-12-13
Newswise — GETTYSBURG, Pa. – The 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will go to James Oakes of the Graduate Center, City University of New York, for “Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865” (W. W. Norton & Company).
Source: NYT
2-20-13
For all the colorful adversaries that comic books have yielded, perhaps no figure in the history of that industry is as vilified as Dr. Fredric Wertham.Wertham, a German-born American psychiatrist, stirred a national furor and helped create a blueprint for contemporary cultural panics in 1954 with the publication of his book “Seduction of the Innocent,” which attacked comic books for corrupting the minds of young readers.While the findings of Wertham (who died in 1981) have long been questioned by the comics industry and its advocates, a recent study of the materials he used to write “Seduction of the Innocent” suggests that Wertham misrepresented his research and falsified his results.Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, reviewed Wertham’s papers, housed in the Library of Congress, starting at the end of 2010, shortly after they were made available to the public....
