Historians in the News

Harvard historian David Landes cited in Romney controversy

#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } ... Citing the “dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” and G.D.P. per capita between Israel and its troublesome occupied zones, Romney said he had been studying the work of David Landes, the octogenarian Harvard historian, whose 1999 tome “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” argued that the political and economic culture of Europe played a key role in its rapid development. “Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said at the fundraiser, which took place at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, where he and his entourage were staying. “Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”

Harold Holzer celebrated in NYT

 

Lake Forest College forever changed by Vietnam War

LAKE FOREST -- The Vietnam War -- whose veterans are being saluted on Lake Forest Day -- tested the government, the Constitution, students, and soldiers. Lake Forest was no less affected -- in fact, three young local men died in the conflict -- but the war also initiated changes at Lake Forest College that resonate to this day....The college responded to all of this by bringing students and faculty more into the governing structure of the school. Lake Forest College President Eugene Hotchkiss receives a share of credit in the recollections of Michael H. Ebner of Lake Forest, professor emeritus of American history at Lake Forest College....

Büsra Ersanli Freed Pending Trial

From the day that the prosecutor ruled my detention, until now, everything has been upside down. I am speechless and now going back to Silivri [prison] to pack my bag – Büsra Ersanli

New College promotes value of a history degree

SARASOTA - College liberal arts programs took a hit last year after some politicians — Florida Gov. Rick Scott among them — suggested they should be cut back because they do not do enough to prepare graduates for meaningful employment.Some, Scott included, suggested redirecting spending and offerings to college programs focused on STEM, or science, engineering, technology and math, as a way to get more graduates employed.Now, a national panel that includes a representative from New College of Florida is fighting back by trying to recraft college history degree programs to make graduates more employable.In all, 60 colleges nationwide are participating in the American Historical Association's three-year initiative to "tune" the history major....

Mahama: writer, historian and Ghana's new president

ACCRA — Ghana's John Dramani Mahama, sworn in as president on Tuesday following the sudden death of John Atta Mills, says he was forever changed by his boyhood experiences during a 1966 military coup.The 53-year-old who had been vice president was born in Bole Bamboi in northern Ghana and holds degrees in history and communications, according to Ghanian media.He served as a diplomat in Japan in the early 1990s before returning to Ghana, where he was first elected to parliament as a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party....

Eminent historian of Northeast India no more

Noted historian of the North East and Meghalaya’s first PhD degree holder Padmashree Dr Hamlet Bareh Ngapkynta passed away early this morning at his residence, his family said.He was 91. He is survived by his wife Merlicia Kharshiing and four children.A Doctorate in Philosophy from the North Eastern Hill University, Hamlet a distinguished scholar, and a prolific writer and researcher, was awarded the Padmashree in 2004....

Canberra historian wins PM's literary award

Canberra historian Bill Gammage's debunking of terra nullius, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, has won the $80,000 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History.But the ANU professor was not at today's ceremony to receive his award from Prime Minister Julia Gillard – instead he is holidaying in Britain. As he told The Canberra Times before his departure, "I'll be somewhere between Carlisle and Wolverhampton, taking my first break in many years."Novelist Gillian Mears's Foal's Bread won the fiction award and Mark McKenna's An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark took the non-fiction award, while the inaugural poetry prize went to Luke Davies for Interferon Psalms....

Turning 'Plan B' Into a 'Plan A' Life

Susan Ferber is executive editor for American and world history at Oxford University Press USA. This column is adapted from a talk she gave in March at Temple University."Susan Ferber is executive editor for American and world history at Oxford University Press USA. Her list includes academic and trade titles on topics ranging from ancient history to contemporary history, many first books as well as works by senior scholars. Books she has edited have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize, and five have become national best sellers. She also teaches at the book workshop of the Columbia Publishing Course."That brief bio is the public record of my life. But it's a polished narrative, like my CV, and it strikes me that the true value in the continuing discussion about alternate career paths for historians lies in talking about what usually gets erased from such documents: the detours, wrong turns, time spent stuck in traffic, even the metaphorical car crashes.

Russia's vodka historian sparks controversy

Historians are known to specialize in narrow, often esoteric realms of academia. Alexander Nikishin’s specialty may on the surface prove to be more popular than others, but he has found difficulty generating interest or support.Nikishin is a historian of vodka, and the founder of a museum dedicated to the spirit.Based at the Kristall distillery, the National Vodka Museum has been in operation since 2006, and consists of Nikishin’s personal collection of more than 50,000 items connected with the history of Russian vodka....“It’s not something alien and evil like some would think,” Nikishin said. “It’s part of a huge agricultural system – a huge part of the grain harvest would be lost if we didn’t make it into spirit.”Not everyone appreciates Nikishin’s efforts at education and enlightenment. Women whose husbands drink heavily, for example, consider such museums or serious discussions about the subject unnecessary, but Nikishin takes exception to the equation of vodka consumption with alcoholism....

GM Trevelyan: a historian in tune with his time, and ours

Sir David Cannadine is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. His most recent book, with Jenny Keating and Nicola Sheldon, is 'The Right Kind of History’A few days ago, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, spoke strongly in support of the importance of history in our national life. His comments were prompted by the relocation of the Foreign Office’s historians (it is the only government department to employ such in-house scholars) from a windowless basement in a distant building to more comfortable and appropriate accommodation close to the Foreign Secretary himself.“You can’t understand,” Hague observed, “the culture of any country without knowing its history. You can’t explain the politics without knowing the history.” Such words are welcome at any time from anyone in government; but they were particularly appropriate last week, for it is exactly 50 years since the death of George Macaulay Trevelyan on July 20 1962, at the age of 86. It is an anniversary that has passed virtually unnoticed; yet in his time – and it was a long time – Trevelyan was the most honoured, admired and widely read historian since his great uncle, Lord Macaulay, whose name he proudly bore.

Historian Hogan will be highest-paid employee at UI-Springfield

SPRINGFIELD — The appointment of former University of Illinois President Michael Hogan as a history professor at the UI Springfield makes him the highest-paid employee on that campus.Hogan, who made $651,000 as president, is now earning $285,100 a year as a professor, under a formula set when he was hired as president in 2010.Only one other employee at UI Springfield earns more than $200,000, according to the UI's "gray book" of salaries. Vice President and Chancellor Susan Koch is listed at $220,000 annually. Former Chancellor Richard Ringeisen, who stepped down in October 2010, earned $281,705 as chancellor emeritus in 2011, but his appointment expired last November....

Renowned Historian Jerry Bentley Was a UH Professor

(Source: Michael Tsai The Honolulu Star-Advertiser (MCT) — For more than 35 years, some of the most important new ideas on world history have been generated, explored and debated in the little corner of the Pacific that Jerry Bentley called home.Bentley, a professor of history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, died July 15 at the age of 62.A widely published and oft-cited expert on the history of early modern Europe and cross-cultural interactions and exchanges in world history, Bentley was instrumental in the establishment of UH’s Center for World History and was the founding editor of the Journal of World History....

Christina Gilmartin, 65; professor was authority on China

A translator, teacher, and writer, Christina Gilmartin taught at Northeastern University. An authority on 20th-century Chinese history, with an emphasis on women and gender, she lived in China from 1978 to 1983. As one of the first US scholars to live in China, she was “a real pioneer,” said Gail Hershatter, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz....

Stuart R. Schram, Nuclear Physicist and Mao Scholar, Dies at 88

Stuart R. Schram was a Minnesotan who made his way to Paris, an Army nuclear physicist who became an expert in French political history, and a mind wide awake in a world remade by war and its cold aftermath. By the late 1950s, having already worked on the Manhattan Project, published scholarly works in French and German, and taught himself Russian and Japanese, he turned his considerable intellect to a divisive and mysterious subject far across the globe and accessible to the West almost solely through written works and transcripts: Mao Zedong. It was an ambitious and rewarding move. Over the next 50 years, Mr. Schram, who died on July 8 in France at 88, completed a seminal biography of Mao just before the disasters of the Cultural Revolution, and spent much of the rest of his life translating into English exhaustive volumes of Mao’s words, in the process shedding critical light on a rapidly changing China. To other China scholars, Mr. Schram provided cleareyed analysis of Mao at a time when many people were eager to reduce him to either an evil dictator or a visionary hero. Mr. Schram’s works, they say, are touchstones in the study of how Mao adapted Marxism for consumption by one of the world’s oldest cultures.

Barnidge: Preserving Bay Area history one word at a time

When UC Berkeley's Regional Oral History Office announced last week that it was beginning research on a Bay Bridge project, a question leapt to mind: UC Berkeley has a Regional Oral History Office?Yep, it's been around since 1954 -- as a division of the Bancroft Library -- dedicated to preserving the history of the Bay Area and the western United States by "conducting carefully researched, tape-recorded and transcribed interviews" of those who were witness to the past.The Bay Bridge project is timed to coincide with the dismantling of the eastern span. Research specialist Sam Redman is seeking recollections of those who watched it go up, helped build it and witnessed how lives were changed."One of the surprises is the extent to which it was used right away," he said. "Real traffic was double or triple the projections."The oral history office has meticulously documented projects ranging from arts and literature to social movement to politics to science and technology, preserving poignant slices of history....

Singer sues noted historian over alleged depiction as alcoholic

An Irish traditional singer is suing historian Prof Diarmaid Ferriter claiming the cover of the academic’s book on the Pioneers depicts him as an alcoholic.Tim Lyons, Athenry, Co Galway, claims a photo of him with two pints of stout on the cover of Prof Ferriter’s A Nation of Extremes – The Pioneers in Twentieth Century Ireland depicts him as an alcoholic. He is also suing the book’s publisher, Irish Academic Press....

Black Officials More Likely Probed For Corruption? Interview with George Derek Musgrove

In Rumor, Repression and Racial Politics, author George Derek Musgrove looks at the history of black elected officials being investigated for alleged wrongdoing. He examines the role of race in U.S. politics between 1965 and 1995. Musgrove shares his research with guest host Maria Hinojosa. [FOR AUDIO, CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE.]MARIA HINOJOSA, HOST:Some supporters of Vincent Gray have said that the investigation of his campaign is, in part, driven by race. The book, "Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics," explores the history of investigations of black elected officials in the post-Civil Rights Era.Author George Derek Musgrove is an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he joined us to talk about the book earlier this week.Welcome to the program.GEORGE DEREK MUSGROVE: Thank you so much for having me....

Tuning Project Meeting: Shared Needs among Diverse History Programs

The AHA’s Tuning project for history held its first full meeting in Arlington, Virginia, the weekend of June 9–10, 2012. Building on lessons from earlier AHA projects that explored the role of historical study in liberal arts education, history faculty from 65 diverse two- and four-year programs convened to frame a vocabulary to explain how history students are prepared for citizenship and careers. What does a history major offer a student? How can our students, upon graduation and beyond, draw on what they have learned to establish careers and contribute to society and civic culture?Tuning aims to equip students with clarity about the skills, understanding, and knowledge they will acquire in a given degree program. The AHA’s Tuning project provides a collaborative forum and process for history faculty to articulate the core competencies of the discipline. It then asks participating faculty members to propagate those core elements in two directions: inward, by aligning their program requirements, courses, syllabi, and individual assignments; and outward, by promoting the value of students’ education in terms of personal development, civic engagement, and career potential.

"And the Worst Book of History Is …" -- HNN's "bad history books" poll results featured in NYT

The political direction of the country may be up for grabs until November, but the right has scored an interim victory — if that’s the word — in a weeklong contest to determine “the least credible history book in print” just concluded by the History News Network.After a week of voting by readers, David Barton’s “The Jefferson Lies” won with some 650 votes, narrowly edging the left-wing historian Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” which received 641 votes.Trailing far behind were Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s “Killing Lincoln” (which argues that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was complicit in Lincoln’s assassination); Thomas DiLorenzo’s “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War”; and Gavin Menzies’s “1421: The Year China Discovered America.”...