Saturday's Notes

The Historical Society is holding its national conference this weekend at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. About a third of the papers (scroll down) that will be given there are accessible online.

"Where Have All the Marxists Gone?" Oxoniensis, 2 June, and"Missing Marxists," ibid., 4 June, have generated considerable discussion about the declining influence of Marxism in the UK's history departments. Hat tip to H-Albion via David Fahey.

Have a look, incidentally, at the Pre-Modern History list on Cliopatria's History Blogroll. We've just updated it with the addition of nearly a dozen pre-modern history blogs, including Oxoniensis and Premodern Economic History Blog.

Henrik Bering,"The Ultimate Literary Portrait," Policy Review, June/July, looks back at James Boswell's picture of Samuel Johnson. Hat tip.

Christopher Benfey,"Industrial-Strength Art," Slate, 4 June, is a slide-show essay of the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who found beauty in factories.

Michael Saler,"The rise of fan fiction and comic book culture," TLS, 4 June, reviews David Hadju's The Ten-Cent Plague: The great comic-book scare and how it changed America and Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends: Reading and writing along the Borderlands. Hat tip.

In light of the likely nomination of Chicago's Barack Obama for President of the United States, Rick Perlstein,"The Meaning of Box 722," Our Future, 5 June, recalls Chicago in 1966; and Kevin Merida,"The ‘Obama Before Obama'," Washington Post, 7 June, looks back at the nation's first elected African American officeholder, John Mercer Langston of Louisa County, Virginia.