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: Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser in the Journal of American History
3-1-07
In 2001, in our first endeavor as editors of the "Textbooks and Teaching" section, we focused on the foundational course in our field, the American history survey. In a "virtual round table," scholars from all over the United States, representing different generations and situated at a wide array of institutions, discussed the pedagogical strategies they used and themes they emphasized in the course.1 As they grappled with the place of political, social, economic, and cultura
Source: Tony Judt in the NYT Book Review
3-11-07
... Fully one-third of “Sacred Causes” is devoted to the Nazi era and to a defense of the Church, Pope Pius XII in particular, against charges (“the cruder — Soviet-inspired — ‘black legend,’ ” in Burleigh’s words) — that the Vatican failed to oppose Nazism and was thus at least passively complicit in the Holocaust. In Burleigh’s reading, Pius can do almost no wrong. Indeed, according to Burleigh, he was simply too subtle to be appreciated today, in “this age of the resonant sound bite and ubiqu
Source: Scott Wilson in the WaPo
3-11-07
Ilan Pappe, one of the revisionist scholars known in Israel as the "new historians," began his career in some of the same wartime archives as Benny Morris. But his own ideological journey has taken him to the far shore of Israel's political gulf and nearly complete isolation.
The two disagree not on the facts about Israel's founding that they helped uncover but on what lessons they hold nearly six decades later. Morris maintains the rise of radical Islam is largely respons
Source: HNN Staff
3-8-07
Simon Schama has won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for gneral nonfiction for his book "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution" (Ecco). The award is given by a non-profit formed in 1974 by book review critics from across the country.
Nominations were announced in January. The other nominees for history books were: Ann Fessler for "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the
Source: University of Connecticut Advance
3-12-07
Mark Overmyer-Velázquez believes current and past debates about the “problem of immigration” have never resolved the fundamental issue underlying south-north Mexican migration: the enormous economic disparities between the two countries.
“Since the beginning of the 20th century and especially in the years during and immediately following the Mexican Revolution, U.S. immigration policy has been characterized by deep ambivalence and fragmentation,” says Overmyer-Velázquez, an assistan
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
3-9-07
In the debate over whether Congress has the power to shape war policy, "the president's challengers have history on their side," writes Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history at Boston University. The legislative branch has often played a significant role in wartime politics, he says.
Mr. Zelizer points specifically to Congressional efforts to end the Vietnam War. During that conflict, he says, lawmakers "forced discussion of difficult questions about the mission, public
Source: Sarah Carr in the Chronicle of Higher Education
3-9-07
January 27, 1971: "If we dedicate all our lives to the socialist revolution, letting the Communist Party and the People decide how we can make the most of our time, our futures are sure to be affluent. Thinking of this, how can I possibly feel blue?"
Jingbei Hu winces now when he reads that, recognizing how that "socialist revolution" led to the murder of countless scholars and the shuttering of many schools. Still, he is determined to share the words he wrote in
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
3-8-07
On March 8, 2007, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously approved H.R. 1255, the "Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007." The bill is expected to go to the House floor the week of March 12.
The National Coalition for History is asking everyone in the historical and archival community to contact their House member as soon as possible and ask that they support H.R. 1255. A summary of the bill is available below.
Here is a link to
Source: PRNewswire
3-8-07
A university professor and a college student will receive two prizes acknowledging excellence for those who publish works that highlight United States postal history.
Professor David M. Henkin, Department of History at the University of California-Berkeley and Jesse Vogler, College of Architecture, Texas Tech University in Lubbock will receive the first Rita Lloyd Moroney Awards from U.S. Postal Service representatives in recognition of their important undertakings. The Rita Lloyd Moroney
Source: Slate
3-8-07
The following essay is adapted from Clive James'
Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and
thinkers who helped shape the 20th century. Slate is publishing an
exclusive selection of these essays,
going roughly from A to Z.
Historical research to this day remains unorganized, and the historian is
expected to make his own instruments or do without them; and so with wooden
ploughs we continue to draw lonely furrows, most successfully when we strike
sand.
-Lew
Source: PBS NewsHour Interview
3-8-07
JEFFREY BROWN: The Library of Congress in Washington wants Americans to hear history, through an effort to preserve important recordings. This week, an eclectic mix of 25 new items was added to the registry. They range in time from 1904, with a monologue by humorist Cal Stewart, to 1986, with Paul Simon performing "Graceland." In between, there's "The Lone Ranger," from 1937, and the Velvet Underground in 1967, John McCormick in 1916, Sarah Vaughan in 1973, and there's much m
Source: Spectrum (University of Buffalo)
3-9-07
The Humanities Institute's fellowship lecture and seminar called "Trauma, Time, and Writing: How Historical Narrative Radicalized Huguenot Resistance Theory," presented assistant professor Amy Graves' theory linking methods used to record early-modern history to modern-day propaganda in journalism in the Center for the Arts screening room this past Monday.
The talk featured Graves, a member of the department of romance languages and literatures, and her recent research on
Source: San Antonio Express-News
3-8-07
Some might envision the state's first official historian being a rugged fellow with facial hair, talking with a Texas drawl and wearing a Stetson.
But history isn't about stereotypes, and the first Texas state historian is a Cuban-born professor who was reared in New Jersey.
Jesús Francisco de la Teja has a long name, but goes by Frank, and calls himself a Yankee.
"I tell people, it's OK, because there was a guy from New Jersey (defender Robert E. C
Source: Barbara Weinstein, in his column as president of the AHA in Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
3-8-07
Back in the early 1970s, while an undergraduate at an unmistakably "elite" university, I announced to a group of fellow history majors that I had decided to make Latin America my area of concentration. You would have thought I had announced to a group of aspiring brain surgeons that I had resolved to become a nurse. There was no mistaking their surprise and disdain. I knew some of them had precociously absorbed the prejudices of a historical profession that, in those days, had a firm g
Source: Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
3-8-07
[AHA] Editor's Note: The following three essays present different viewpoints on the contentious question of the role institutional review boards play or should play in relation to oral history. The first essay, based on (and updated from) a presentation the author made at an August 5, 2005, workshop sponsored by the American Historical Association on the education of historians, provides an overview of the problem and also explains various steps that have been taken and can be taken in the futur
Source: AHA Perspectives
3-8-07
It could perhaps happen only in Atlanta. The historians who usually gather sedately and seriously for the AHA annual meeting could be seen this time stomping their feet and swaying to the sweet sounds of the South—and joining in the singing too—during a plenary session that was given over to history presented as performance. The 121st annual meeting was remarkable also for several other firsts: the first film festival; the first time the presidential address was translated into sign language; an
Source: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria (HNN Blog)
7-8-07
... Last July, Cox News journalist Elliott Jaspin published a four-part series of articles about communities in the United States that drove out their African American residents between 1864 and 1924. The syndicate had allowed Jaspin to devote five years of his time on its payroll exclusively to the series. His story covered 16 pages in Cox's Austin American-Statesman and versions of it appeared in five other Cox newspapers. The American-Statesman even created
Source: Nation
3-26-06
In the early 1980s The Nation invited the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died February 28, to join a panel. Professor Schlesinger declined the invitation, saying he would have to be "a monumental masochist" to lend himself to a proceeding sponsored by The Nation, a magazine that had been attacking him in its pages for the past thirty years.
In his 1949 book The Vital Center, Schlesinger had described The Nation (along with The New Republic) as "a fellow
Source: Nation
3-26-06
Among the more unremarked achievements of the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is how little enmity he inspired. Excluding the ideologically obsessed sourpuss Norman Podhoretz and the young philistine Jonah Goldberg, nary a disparaging word has been heard about this most combative of liberal lions since his recent death. This is surprising because, leaving aside politics, for the balance of his remarkable sixty-plus years as a historian, journalist, pundit, film critic, presidential adviser and marat
Source: NYT
3-8-07
... Today the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to discuss a new bill that would overturn Mr. Bush’s order [limiting access to presidential records], said a committee spokeswoman, Karen Lightfoot. The sponsors, who include the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, hope to bring the bill to the floor of the House next week.
The 1978 Presidential Records Act, part of the post-Watergate reforms, clearly gave the American public owner
