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: AP
7-13-11
WASHINGTON — A historian and former director of the National Portrait Gallery is returning to the Smithsonian Institution to serve as acting director of the National Museum of American History.Marc Pachter retired from the Smithsonian in 2007. On Wednesday, the museum complex announced he will return Aug. 15 to temporarily replace Brent Glass, who is leaving the American history museum....
Source: NYT
7-12-11
WASHINGTON — A presidential historian and author, Barry H. Landau, was arrested with a colleague on Saturday in Baltimore on charges of stealing historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society, including ones signed by Abraham Lincoln.Mr. Landau, a collector of presidential memorabilia based in New York City who cultivated actors and former statesmen, was taken into custody after spending several hours reviewing documents at the historical society with a colleague, Jason Savedoff, the Baltimore Police Department said.An employee called the police to report having seen Mr. Savedoff put a document inside a laptop case and leave the building. The employee followed Mr. Savedoff to a nearby men’s bathroom and identified him when the police arrived....
Source: Robert B. Townsend at the AHA Blog
7-11-11
Robert B. Townsend is deputy director of the AHA.At its meeting in early June, the AHA Council accepted four new applications for affiliation from the Association for Documentary Editing and three research centers at the Newberry Library (the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture). The three centers join the Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies as affiliates of the AHA. Learn more about each center below:Newberry Centers
Source: Lynn Lubamersky at Inside Higher Ed
7-11-11
Lynn Lubamersky is associate professor of history at Boise State University.When I was a graduate student, I hoped that one day I'd make it to the "meat market" – the interviews at the American Historical Association convention, where history departments interview candidates for tenure-track jobs. Freshly-minted Ph.D.s travel to Boston, Chicago, or New York during one of the most expensive travel times of the year for initial interviews.Once, when the AHA was held in San Francisco, I attended and watched my former teaching assistant interview. Rooms were in such short supply that the university could not get an interview suite and she had to shout to be heard above the din of the cocktail lounge to make the case for why she should get one of the three on-campus interviews. Needless to say, the "meat market" is really not the best way to determine who is best for the job, since it requires graduate students to spend money at a time in their academic lives when they may have little of it, and it takes place in an artificial environment where it's difficult for people to show who they really are.
Source: Atlanta Post
7-11-11
One hundred years from now what weight will race and/or ethnicity have on our understanding of identity? Are we moving towards a society where race will become so ambiguous that notions tied into race will become a thing of the past? The concept of a post-racial society seemed to gain further traction during the election of President Barack Obama, but as author Dr. Kwasi Konadu notes, there hasn’t been much of a post-racial anything in the years since President Obama’s election. Konadu is a professor of history at the Center for Ethnic Studies at City University and is also the author of such works as “The Akan Diaspora in the Americas” and “Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society.Konadu recently shared his thoughts on identity, post-racialism, and what it means to be African.How has your identity shaped your work?
Source: NYT
7-9-11
Editor's Note: NYT columnist David Brooks criticized education historian Diane Ravitch in his July 1 column for being too harsh on charter schools and her harsh critique of their testing regimes. Ms. Ravitch responded in a letter to the NYT on July 9.Re “Smells Like School Spirit,” by David Brooks (column, July 1):Mr. Brooks has misrepresented my views. While I have criticized charter schools, I am always careful to point out that they vary widely. The overwhelming majority of high-quality research studies on charters shows that some are excellent, some are abysmal and most are no better than regular public schools.Some charters succeed because they have additional resources, supplied by their philanthropic sponsors; some get better results by adding extra instructional time. We can learn from these lessons to help regular public schools.
Source: Guardian (UK)
7-1-11
Historian Norman Stone has been drawn into a battle of Amazon rankings after his latest outing was dismissed as "a farrago of errors, half-truths, fantasies, non sequiturs and irrelevancies" by a reviewer.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
7-5-11
Dr. Brent Glass has announced he is leaving his position as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History effective July 10; he will continue at the Smithsonian as a senior advisor through the end of this year.Glass has served as director of the museum since 2002 and overseen the most extensive renovation of the museum in its history, the conservation of the Star-Spangled Banner and the installation of major new exhibitions on transportation, maritime history, military history and first ladies’ gowns.The Museum of American History is the third-busiest museum in the Smithsonian complex with more than 4 million visitors in 2010. It has a staff of 250, an annual federal budget of about $30 million and about 3 million artifacts. During Glass’ tenure, the museum has raised more than $60 million from individuals, foundations and corporations. . During Glass’ tenure at the museum the building underwent an $85 million renovation that took nearly 2½ years. When it reopened in November 2008, it included an entirely new core with a dramatic skylight and glass staircase opening up the atrium and a new exhibition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Glass considers the renovation of the core of the building, completed in 2008, to be the highlight of his nine years at the Smithsonian.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
7-5-11
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero recently announced the appointment of Debra Steidel Wall as Deputy Archivist of the United States, effective July 3, 2011.Ms. Wall is a twenty-year veteran of the National Archives. For the past four years she has served as Chief of Staff, providing exceptional leadership and effective management for the agency. She has been actively involved in creating and implementing the “Charter for Change,” the roadmap for the transformation of the National Archives.As Deputy Archivist, Ms. Wall will be instrumental in achieving the goals of the transformation. An early priority will be helping to build new leadership into effective executive and management teams. She will also assist the Archivist in achieving an open and inclusive work environment; encouraging creativity and investing in innovation.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
7-5-11
On June 13, the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress (ACRC) met at the U.S Capitol Visitor Center.The Advisory Committee is comprised of the officials in Congress responsible for its records (Clerk of the House, Secretary of the Senate, Senate Historian, and House Historian) and the Archivist of the United States, who is responsible for the administration of the archived records of Congress. House and Senate leadership appoint public members of the committee, who represent historians, political scientists, congressional archivists, and other users and caretakers of legislative records.Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson began the meeting by noting that eight Senators had already announced their retirements following the 2012 election and her office was working with them to identify repositories for their records. She announced that 200+ boxes of Senate records from the 99th Congress, and 36 boxes more than 50 years old, had been entered into the declassification process. These records come mainly from the files of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committee.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
7-5-11
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has announced the appointment of Dr. Peter Shulman as the recipient of the 2011 Legislative Archives Research Fellowship.“We are pleased to welcome Dr. Shulman to the National Archives as the first recipient of this generous fellowship funded by the Foundation for the National Archives. His appointment grows out of our commitment on many different levels to foster research and inquiry into the historical records of Congress housed in the National Archives Center for Legislative Archives. We look forward to having him share the results of his research with the community at large,” said Mr. Ferriero.
Source: History Today
7-6-11
...Richard was a pioneer of a type of television history that explored the experiences of the common soldier; what he really felt at Naseby, the Somme, at El Alamein or at Basra. His books – Firing Line, Redcoat, Sahib, Tommy, Dusty Warriors – are full of this. On television he was able to combine genuine scholarship with a genius for storytelling and an ability to communicate complex events in a supremely accessible way. He understood the military mind but was no apologist for generals or senior commanders. He understood weapons and how they worked or failed to work and what this meant to your average squaddie at the critical moment of combat. The several series of War Walks that he went on to make for the BBC capture this ability magnificently. He could draw out the significance of the tiniest detail, a slight advantage in terrain, the supremacy of one weapon over another, of literally how ‘the want of a nail’ could cost you the battle. And everything he said was delivered in his enthusiastic, passionate, unique style. He will be sadly missed and, as one of the great communicators, his death is a great loss to television....
Source: NYT
7-7-11
Robert Sklar, a film scholar whose 1975 book “Movie-Made America” was one of the first histories to place Hollywood films in a social and political context, finding them a key to understanding how modern American values and beliefs have been shaped, died on Saturday in Barcelona. He was 74.The cause was a brain injury sustained in a bicycle accident, his son Leonard said.Mr. Sklar, who was a professor of cinema studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for more than 30 years, came to film in the 1960s, when he was asked to serve as a faculty adviser to the Cinema Guild, the student film society at the University of Michigan, where he taught in the American culture program.He found the proposal enticing. After publishing a cultural study of F. Scott Fitzgerald, he had begun focusing on Hollywood film as a lens for analyzing American society in the 1920s and 1930s....
Source: Examiner.com
7-7-11
CNN announced yesterday that Anderson Cooper has been named as lead reporter for its upcoming coverage of the final space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral. CNN is set to air a two-hour special called Space Shuttle: Final Mission on its U.S. and international stations from 8:00-10:00 a.m. ET on Friday, July 8th. Former astronauts Cady Coleman, Senator Bill Nelson, and historian Douglas Brinkley will join Cooper for CNN’s Atlantis launch coverage. Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch at 11:26 a.m....
Source: University of Delaware
7-6-11
8:19 a.m., July 6, 2011--Ritchie Garrison was helping to clean out his late uncle’s attic in Massachusetts when he came upon an intriguing department store bag.“When I saw what was inside, I almost fell over,” the University of Delaware history professor says. It was his great-grandfather George T. Garrison’s folded-up shelter tent from the Civil War, or more correctly, half of a shelter tent.“Each man carried a half, and when you buttoned the two halves together and suspended it over a sapling or a rope, you had a two-man tent,” explains Garrison, director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at UD. “They looked a little like pup tents and were an idea borrowed from the French military.”Only about 30 shelter tents are known to exist from the Civil War, according to Garrison, and this one is even more rare because of its regiment of origin....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
7-5-11
The Middle East Studies Association has asked Yale University to investigate whether alleged government spying on the scholar Juan Cole played a role in Yale’s decision to deny him a faculty position. In a letter sent Tuesday to campus officials, MESA said it was making the request in response to a recent New York Times report accusing the Bush administration of illegally spying on Mr. Cole, a critic of its policies, to try to discredit him....
Source: NewsMax
7-3-11
If America's Founding Fathers were clear on anything, it was that deficits could not be tolerated, says best-selling author and political historian Larry Schweikart. So what would the founders say about the current economy and crushing U.S. debt? “The founders were very clear on issues of debt,” Schweikart says, “so certainly they would want to see our fiscal house in order.” The debt crisis is only one symptom of a nation that is more divided now than “at the time of the Civil War,” Schweikart says. “It is very deeply divided. And it's more divided than, I think, at the time of the Civil War, though less likely to involve violence because it's not sectional in nature. But the divisions involve a large segment of people who became heavily dependent on the government, especially the federal government, for their daily existence,” he points out....
Source: BBC News
7-2-11
Historians believe the Staffordshire Hoard could hold vital clues to explain the conversion of Mercia - England's last great pagan kingdom - to Christianity in the 7th Century.The hoard was found buried on a farm in Staffordshire in July 2009.The 1,500 pieces of gold are thought to be the spoils of an Anglo-Saxon battle.'Warring kingdoms'TV historian Dan Snow believes the find has the potential to rewrite the history books.Speaking on BBC1's The Staffordshire Hoard, he said the conversion of Mercia "marked the beginning of a new era in English history"....
Source: BBC News
7-5-11
Andrew Boyd was a prolific journalist and popular historian who for decades enlivened the Belfast writing scene with his trenchant opinions and researches into the city's history and politics.A highly independent individual who delighted in argument and relished controversy, he was a man of the left throughout his life.From that standpoint he was outspokenly critical of practically all political groupings, left, right and centre.Although he abhorred partition and the creation of the Northern Ireland state, Boyd was contemptuous of modern republicanism.He declared scornfully that the IRA had decided "to kill thousands of decent, inoffensive people and innocent children, destroy commercial and private property to the value of billions of pounds, and incite the bloodlust of the most brutal loyalists".He was also highly critical of the unionist party, accusing it of maintaining power "by exploiting the ignorance and fears of the Protestants, thriving on recurring violence, the inflaming of hatreds and the continuance of divisions".His most striking work was his book Holy War in Belfast, which detailed the violent outbreaks other historians had tended to play down....
Source: The Browser
7-3-11
Please tell us about the document that preceded the Constitution.The Articles of Confederation formed America’s first federal constitution. It was framed in 1776 and 1777 but not ratified until 1781. The articles created a unicameral Continental Congress, which had no authority to legislate; it could not pass statutes. Its members generally served for only a few months at a time and went home often. The Continental Congress did much of its work by sending resolutions, recommendations and requisitions to the states. It assumed that the states would simply do the right thing for the United States. That assumption turned out to be terribly naive. Figuring out how to replace the articles was the challenge the framers faced in 1787.Although the United States is a relatively young country, we have the oldest written constitution still in use. What is uniquely enduring about the document?What’s uniquely enduring about the document is how deeply Americans are wedded to it. When Americans started writing constitutions in the 1770s, doing so was a new idea. The idea of having a written constitution as the original supreme fundamental source of law was an American invention. Now most nations around the world, with a few notable exceptions, have written constitutions.
