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: Radio Australia
9-11-12
One of the foremost experts on Tongan history, Dr Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, has died in Melbourne, two days before her 82nd birthday.She was the child of missionaries, and grew up knowing members of the Tongan royal family.Bessie, as she was known, wrote the definitive biography of Queen Salote, and maintained her close links with Tonga all her life.Bruce Hill asked one of her colleagues, Dr Helen Lee from La Trobe University, how serious a blow Dr Wood-Ellem's death is for Tonga....
Source: WaPo
9-10-12
ROME — A U.S. law professor-philosopher, a British botanist, a German-born music historian and an Australian climate expert have won this year’s Balzan Prizes.The Balzans are awarded each year in a variety of fields and are given by a foundation based in Milan and Zurich, Switzerland. Each prize is worth 750,000 Swiss francs (about €620,000 or $790,000), and half of the amount must be destined for research, preferably involving young scholars....Reinhard Strohm, 70, a German-born music scholar, won the musicology prize. He was praised for extensive research on the history of European music from the late Middle Ages to the present, among other contributions....
Source: Russell Jacoby for Salon
9-9-12
Russell Jacoby is the author of "Bloodlust" and "The Last Intellectuals." He teaches history at UCLA
Source: ArtInfo
9-1-12
Francis Bacon's tortured figures might allude to more than his own conflicted psyche. In a book that will be published by Tate later this month, Martin Hammer suggests that the British painter also drew heavily on Nazi photographs found in books and magazines after the war.It's a radical new reading of Bacon's oeuvre. Hammer, a professor of history and philosophy of art at the University of Kent, told The Independent: “The use of Nazi imagery in Bacon's work was an important aspect of his creativity; it is present in many works. It was something that hadn't been addressed.”...
Source: Hays Free Press
9-5-12
Native Texans and newcomers alike have an opportunity to learn more about our state’s history on Sept. 15.Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and the Texas General Land Office (GLO) will host the Third Annual Save Texas History Symposium. This year’s presentation is “The Civil War in Texas: Death, Disease and Minié Balls.”For those who were wondering, a minié ball is a rifle bullet with a conical head used in muzzle-loading firearms....
Source: Town Topics (Princeton, NJ)
9-5-12
Last year, the tenth anniversary of 9-11 was marked with numerous commemorative events, locally and across the country. Observing the eleventh anniversary of the catastrophic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is proving to be a quieter affair. But two upcoming programs at Mercer County Community College promise to pay moving tribute to those who died that day.First, on Tuesday, September 11 at 11 a.m., a ceremony at the Student Center Memorial Garden on the campus in West Windsor will include Sergeant Michael Yeh of the Lawrence Township Police Department, who is also a volunteer firefighter in Princeton Junction. Mr. Yeh will speak about his experiences at Ground Zero as part of the New Jersey Urban Search and Rescue Team. Student vocalist Alison Varra will perform as part of the ceremony.Then on Thursday, September 13 from noon to 2:30 p.m., a panel discussion will include historians, a journalist who covered 9-11, a survivor of the attacks, and two New Jersey residents who lost family members and have devoted their energies since to works that honor their memories. The discussion is the first in a series of programs organized by the New Jersey State Museum to go along with its exhibition, “9/11: Reflections and Memories from New Jersey” currently on extended view at the museum’s main building on West State Street in Trenton....
Source: Courier Mail
9-6-12
MILITARY historians have attacked the "`excessive mythology'' surrounding the Kokoda campaign in New Guinea during World War II.During a conference to mark the 70th anniversary of Kokoda at the Australian War Memorial today eminent historians, Professor David Horner and Ashley Ekins, questioned whether or not the campaign deserved such iconic status.Mr Ekins said there was "excessive mythology about the Kokoda story'' and Professor Horner questioned the significance of Kokoda in the context of the wider battle for the south-west Pacific and the war overall....
Source: NYT
9-6-12
Jon Voss went to Washington last year with a very specific plan: to pose for a photo at the Jefferson Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.He wanted that particular photo because his father, Joe, was photographed in that spot while living in Washington between 1948 and 1952.The younger Voss wanted to recreate the photo right down to standing on the same block of marble.Mr. Voss had a good reason for his meticulous recreation. Once he got the shot, he shared it with the world on historypin.com, a Web site with ambitions to create a large collection of historical photos cataloged by location and date....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
9-5-12
Scott McLemee writes for Inside Higher Ed.This year is the centenary of James Harvey Robinson’s book The New History: Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook, which made a case for teaching and writing about the past as something other than the record of illustrious men gaining power and then doing things with it.“Our bias for political history,” he wrote, “led us to include a great many trifling details of dynasties and military history which merely confound the reader and take up precious space that should be devoted to certain great issues hitherto neglected.” The new breed of historians, such as the ones Robinson was training at Columbia University, would explore the social and cultural dimensions of earlier eras -- “the ways in which people have thought and acted in the past, their tastes and their achievements in many fields” – as well as what he called “the intricate question of the role of the State in the past.”
Source: UCR Today
9-5-12
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — UC Riverside history professor Catherine Allgor has been sworn in as a member of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation Board of Trustees and will serve a six-year term. Allgor was nominated by President Barack Obama in September 2011 and later confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She was sworn in at the foundation’s annual meeting June 27.While in Washington, D.C., Allgor met with three American history teachers from Southern California who received fellowships from the foundation. They are Christoph Brown, from Poly High School in Riverside, and Dennis Bullock, from Providence High School in Burbank, who were named fellows in 2011; and Juan Resendez, from Irvine High School in Irvine, a 2012 fellow. The three were in Washington to attend the foundation’s four-week Summer Institute on the Constitution that began June 18. Among the guest speakers was U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg....
Source: Chicago Tribune
9-5-12
Since the financial market collapse of 2008, hardly a news cycle has churned without reference to the Great Recession being the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. For some, those two bad-debt calamities loom as the dark anomalies in the brighter story of America's long ascent to economic superpower. Not so, says Scott Reynolds Nelson, a history professor at the College of William and Mary....
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
8-30-12
The National Coalition for History (NCH) has joined twelve other history and archival organizations, in requesting a Federal appeals court to review a lower court ruling that would prohibit the release of CIA records pertaining to the Bay of Pigs invasion that occurred over fifty years ago. If upheld, the decision could have a potentially chilling effect on historians, political scientists, academics and researchers gaining access to CIA files.
Joining NCH in signing the letter were:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
8-30-12
Stephen Kidd has been named Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), a coalition of more than 100 humanities organizations and institutions from around the country committed to advocacy for the humanities. Kidd comes to the Alliance most recently from the Smithsonian Institution, where he served as Director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Associate Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.Stephen Kidd’s appointment as Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance is effective September 4, 2012.Michael Brintnall, President of the NHA, said that the Alliance is delighted to bring on Stephen as the new director. He said, “Stephen Kidd stands out as a scholar with a practiced understanding of the connections between humanities scholarship and public life. He comes to us with experience and with respect from all of the constituencies important to our mission, and with a driving commitment to the values we share about how advancing the humanities can advance the common good.”
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
8-30-12
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has appointed Charley Barth as Director of the Office of the Federal Register.As Director, Barth oversees providing access to the Federal Register and administering both the Electoral College and the constitutional amendment process. He started this position earlier this month.Barth has a long career of Government service. He started as an intern for Senator Carl Levin (MI). He then worked as an IT contract specialist at the Naval Information Systems Management Center. He next served as Program Manager and Subject Matter Expert in Information Management for the Department of the Navy’s Chief Information Officer. He became the Department of Homeland Security’s first Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act officer. Most recently, he was Director of Records for the Secretary of the Navy.Born and raised in Michigan, Barth attended Ball State University on a full football scholarship. He received his BS degree in Political Science with a minor in Military Science. He earned a Master of Management degree in Procurement and Acquisitions Management from Webster University.
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
8-30-12
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington recently appointed John Witte Jr., a professor at Emory University, to the Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.The Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History was established to explore the history of America with special attention to the ethical dimensions of domestic economic, political and social policies.While at the Library, Witte will work on his book “Why Two in One Flesh? The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy,” which will investigate the historic evolution of the Western tradition of marriage and the reasons for the current day prohibition of polygamy, including ethical as well as practical considerations.At Emory University in Atlanta, Witte is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Witte also serves as a member of the Scholars Council at the Kluge Center....
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
8-30-12
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero recently announced the selection of Pascal Massinon as the 2012 National Archives Legislative Archives Fellow.“We are pleased to welcome Mr. Massinon to the National Archives as the second recipient of this generous fellowship funded by the Foundation for the National Archives. This fellowship stems from our ongoing commitment to fostering research and inquiry into National Archives records. We look forward to Mr. Massinon sharing his research findings with staff and the community at large,” said the Archivist.Massinon’s Ph.D. dissertation topic is “Home Taping: Participant Listeners and the Political Culture of Home Recording in the U.S.” His research examines how changes in home-recording technologies shaped the debate over copyright law and influenced the evolution of the U.S. entertainment industry from the 1950s to the late 1990s. Using records from the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives, he will explore how Congress changed entertainment industry regulations and how legislators, lobbyists, artists, and diverse business interests understood the role of government with regard to cultural policy.
Source: Turkish Weekly
8-31-12
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Stalingrad, a ferocious and brutal siege that proved to be a major psychological and military tipping point in World War II. RFE/RL correspondent Coilin O'Connor talks to the prominent British historian Antony Beevor -- author of "Stalingrad" -- about how this engagement between two totalitarian armies helped turn the course of the global conflict. Beevor also discusses the enduring legacy of Stalingrad seven decades after the event and looks at some of the popular misconceptions associated with this famous battle. RFE/RL: Do you think books like yours have helped reclaim the narrative of the Second World War to a certain extent, i.e. until the 1970s the “history” of the war in the Anglophone world focused heavily on the Western front, whereas the Eastern front was not given the attention it deserved? Do Western attitudes to the war have to be readjusted somewhat?Antony Beevor: I think very much so. And it’s not just a question of the Eastern front, which I think has been scandalously neglected by Western historians. But this was also partly due to the secrecy that had been maintained throughout the Cold War by the Soviet Union and it not allowing any access to the archives for Western historians....
Source: Haaretz
8-30-12
Playing off Republicans against Democrats in U.S. Presidential election campaigns in order to advance a Zionist cause is a gambit first employed at a Republican National Convention 68 years ago by a man called Netanyahu - Benzion Netanyahu.In an article published recently in the Los Angeles Times entitled “The Jewish vote as a Factor in U.S. Politics” Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, recounts the efforts of the late father of the current Israeli prime minister to use the 1944 Republican Convention in Chicago as a means of pressuring Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration to oppose British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and to increase its own efforts to help Jewish refugees escaping from Europe.Medoff portrays this premeditated playing off of Republicans against Democrats as a watershed event for the American Jewish community. “This was the beginning of the "Jewish vote" as a factor in U.S. presidential politics. For the first time, both parties recognized that Jewish votes might be up for grabs, and that Jewish concerns needed to be addressed to attract the support of Jewish voters,” he writes....
Source: WaPo
9-1-12
...Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, [says] party conventions are still extremely important — and they can often change the course of political history in unexpected ways. We talked by phone recently about the long history of conventions, why they still matter in this age, and what the future might hold.Brad Plumer: We’re no longer at the point where presidential nominees are actually selected at the party conventions. So could it be fair to say that these things no longer matter?Julian Zelizer: Yeah, for a long time before the 1960s they were actually the places where the candidates were selected, where party bosses still mattered, where there was an opportunity to question and challenge the different candidates. That changed in the late 1960s and early ’70s, with the whole idea being that primaries and caucuses would allow non-party bosses to decide who the nominee was. So now they mainly just serve the function of showcasing the presidential and vice presidential nominees and the party. These are tightly scripted commercials. But that’s still valuable. It’s a moment when more people are watching, when the parties can explain what their candidate is about for more than 30-second spots....
Source: WaPo
9-2-12
Elliot N. Sivowitch, 80, a scholar of television and radio history who worked at the Smithsonian Institution for four decades, died July 20 of cardiac arrest at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.A former colleague, Melinda Machado, confirmed the death.Mr. Sivowitch joined the Smithsonian in 1959, then worked for a year at the Library of Congress before returning to the Smithsonian. He spent nearly his entire career in the electricity collection of the National Museum of American History and its predecessor, the Museum of History and Technology....
