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: NYT
1-12-11
Oleg Grabar, a historian of Islamic art and architecture whose imposingly broad range and analytical subtlety helped transform the Western study of Islamic culture, died Saturday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 81.
The cause was heart failure, his wife, Terry, said.
Professor Grabar, the son of the eminent Byzantinist Andre Grabar, specialized in the architecture of the seventh- and eighth-century Umayyad dynasty early in his career. In the 1960s he led the excava
Source: NJ.com
1-12-11
PRINCETON -- Oleg Grabar, a renowned historian of Islamic art and an archeologist, died Saturday of heart failure. He was 81.
Grabar was a professor emeritus at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, where he began teaching in 1990.
Grabar, who taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard before coming to the Institute, published 20 books and wrote numerous articles in scholarly journals. He is credited with expanding the interest in
Source: CHE
1-12-11
Many historians say a key difference between the Vietnam War and today's U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is that far fewer members of their profession are stepping forward to be public critics of policies associated with the "war on terror."
Participants in a panel discussion held here last weekend, at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, said historians' relative silence about today's policies stems not from agreement, but from t
Source: Bloomberg News
1-12-11
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke saved the global economy from falling into a great depression by presiding over an historic increase in the size of the central bank’s balance sheet, said Harvard’s Niall Ferguson.
“He turned the Fed into the biggest hedge fund in history,” said Ferguson, an historian at Harvard University, in a speech delivered at a conference in Copenhagen hosted by the Skagen Fund. “He bought stuff that no central bank has ever bought before. He bough
Source: NOLA.com
1-10-11
When President Barack Obama established the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling on May 22, 2010, the worst oil disaster in American history had just entered its second month.
Oil was gushing into the Gulf from a hole in the sea floor, with no end in sight. Americans were transfixed and horrified by the biggest story of 2010. Congress, firmly in the hands of Democrats and eager to expose the culpability of an oil industry many viewed as re
Source: FrontPageMag
1-11-11
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Anna Geifman, aProfessor of History at Boston University, where she teachesclasses on imperial Russia and the USSR, psychohistory, and modern terrorism. She is also Senior Researcher at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her most recent book is
Source: Durango Herald
1-11-11
Center of Southwest Studies Director Kevin Mark Britz died after a yearlong battle with cancer Friday, Jan. 7, 2011, at his home in Durango. He was 56.
Mr. Britz was born to Air Force Technical Sgt. Daniel T. and Ida M. (Berger) Britz on May 1, 1954, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. As a military family, they lived in a number of places, including Homestead AFB in Florida; Turner AFB in Georgia; Nouasseur AFB in Morocco; and Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson, Ariz..
Mr.
Source: Medievalists.net
1-10-11
New research has uncovered a forgotten chapter in the history of the Bible, offering a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture. The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.
The key to the new discovery lay in manuscripts, some of them mere fragments,
Source: The First Post (UK)
1-9-11
Historians are divided over plans for a luxury, eight-day package tour of sites relating to Adolf Hitler, with some saying it will turn into a "perverse pilgrimage".
The trip, scheduled for June, will visit the Munich beer cellar where the future Fuhrer launched his ill-fated 1923 putsch, Berchtesgaden where Hitler had his 'Eagle's Nest' castle and Berlin where he committed suicide....
Dissent came from historian David Cesarani, who told the Sunday Times: &quo
Source: Discovery News
1-5-11
Gesù Nuovo One of the most beautiful churches in Naples, Italy, conceals a musical score within its unusual stone-clad facade, a new study has concluded.
Famous for its triumphant Neapolitan Baroque interior and lavishly decorated with colored marble and frescoes, the fortress-like church of Gesù Nuovo has long puzzled historians for the mysterious symbols engraved on the diamond-shaped stones protruding from its facade.
"It was believed that these symbols represen
Source: Unreported Heritage News
1-2-11
A Princeton University researcher has identified the owner of a New Testament papyrus that dates to the time of Constantine the Great.
Constantine was the Roman emperor who allowed Christians to practice freely, ending hundreds of years of persecution. His decision led people throughout the empire to convert and disseminate the New Testament.
Now, thanks to this new discovery, we know the story of one of these Christians.
“It is the first and only ancient instance whe
Source: LA Times
1-7-11
Reporting from Madrid —Emilia Giron never forgot her second son. She wanted to name him Jesus, but he was taken from her in the hospital to be baptized and was never returned.
He was stolen while she was imprisoned by Gen. Francisco Franco's regime, in the early 1940s, after the country's bitter civil war.
"I felt that anguish all my life," Giron told a historian 60 years later. "I carried him for nine months and I never got to know him. Pain like that do
Source: NYT
1-11-11
BERLIN — The case of the businessman who taught his dog to raise his paw at the command “Hitler” may never go down in the annals of Third Reich history as consequential, but it is has given people here a reason to laugh, not at the nation’s sinister deeds but at those who were responsible....
“The dog affair tells us the Nazis were not only criminals and mass murderers, they were silly as hell,” said Klaus Hillenbrand, a historian and author who has focused on the Nazi era and uncov
Source: Montreal Gazette
1-11-11
Despite a common belief that the attempted assassination of a U.S. politician is a rare event that happens once in a generation, a U.S. historian says it is a tradition that has reared its head whenever the country is in a period of social unrest and radical change.
Joseph Palermo, an expert on political history at California State University in Sacramento, said the struggling U.S. economy, combined with the polarizing hype created by the 24-hour news cycle, means conditions were ri
Source: Inside Higher Ed
1-11-11
BOSTON -- It was difficult to escape the conclusion, during the American Historical Association’s annual meeting here over the weekend, that higher education is in the throes of a crisis. Panels used the word “crisis” to describe the state of the job market for historians, the state of public universities, and the state of higher education in general. And the enemy was consistently identified as the ideology and analytical tools of business. For example, the
Source: H-Net Business
1-11-10
The History Department at UT Austin is launching an informative, interactive history web site today, January 10. Not Even Past provides current historical writing to a popular audience. For history buffs who want reading recommendations and short, interesting, digestible stories every day, the website offers a meaningful, dynamic, and ongoing conversation about History in the form of text, audio, and video histories on subjects that span the globe. The s
Source: NYT
1-7-11
SUDBURY, Mass. — William H. Fitzhugh, the cantankerous publisher of a journal that showcases high school research papers, sits at his computer in a cluttered office above a secondhand shop here, deploring the nation’s declining academic standards.
“Most kids don’t know how to write, don’t know any history, and that’s a disgrace,” Mr. Fitzhugh said. “Writing is the most dumbed-down subject in our schools.”
His mood brightens, however, when talk turns to the occasionally
Source: HNN Staff
1-8-11
At approximately 10:00 am on January 8, the fire alarms sounded at the Hynes Convention Center, right in the middle of the dozens of morning sessions. Despite admonitions from the P.A. to stand by, a considerable number of AHA-goers moved to the exits, emptying many meeting rooms.
Approximately ten minutes after the first signal, an all-clear was sounded. The cause of the alarm has yet to be determined, though several security officers speculated that it was a test.
Staff f
Source: Rhode Island College
1-6-11
Norman H. Cooke of Glocester, associate professor emeritus of history, died at the Philip Hulitar Center on Dec. 26. He was 86.
Cooke began at RIC as an assistant professor in 1961, and retired in 1986.
While at the college he participated in the RIC Ethnic Heritage Project “The Year of the French” in 1980. He delivered a lecture titled “The Final Act: Rochambeau and the American Revolution.” The release announcing the event told of his “wide knowledge of military histo
Source: Globe and Mail
12-29-10
David Noble, one of North America's most prominent critics of the corporatization of academia and a groundbreaking researcher on the influence of technology on society, died Monday evening at age 65. He passed away in hospital unexpectedly of natural causes with his family at his side, friends said.
Prof. Noble rose to prominence for his critiques of technological automation, which he argued had been a method of depriving workers of power. He worked at the Massachusettes Institute o
