cultural history

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• 10/24/2021
  

  Portrait of the Artist as a Businesswoman: Dorothea Lange’s Lost San Francisco Years

  by Jasmin Darznik

  Dorothea Lange's early work as a portrait photographer for San Francisco's elite seems at odds with her famous documentary work of the Depression. But that work sharpened her sense of aesthetics and of her own place in the world, foundations of her more famous later period.

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  10/14/2021
  

  Manhood, Madness, and Moonshine

  by Dillon Carroll

  Today's concern for "deaths of despair" among white Americans isn't unprecedented; a wave of alcoholism and temperance advocacy after the Civil War highlighted the relationship between social unsettlement, substance abuse and social reformism.

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• 10/17/2021
  

  Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

  by Thomas Doherty

  Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

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• 10/10/2021
  

  Recovering Women's Reproductive Lives, One Mutilated Record at a Time

  by Catherine Prendergast

  "Far too often, archives resemble graveyards with marked tombs for men in which a few bones of women are scattered. It’s time to dig up all of the bones and ask them what story they tell."

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• SOURCE: Places Journal
  9/25/2021
  

  Extinct

  by Barbara Penner and Adrian Forty

  "The history of objects becomes far richer when we also consider the underside of progress: the conflicts, obsolescence, accidents, destruction, and failures that have been such an integral part of modernization and its modes of operation."

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  9/30/2021
  

  The Real Foucault

  by Michael C. Behrent

  "Why does Foucault now feel like our contemporary, almost forty years after his death? Why are leftists turning against him? And why are some conservatives adopting him?"

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/29/2021
  

  What Young People's Embrace of "The Sopranos" Says about a Changing Culture

  "The show’s depiction of contemporary America as relentlessly banal and hollow is plainly at the core of the current interest in the show, which coincides with an era of crisis across just about every major institution in American life."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/24/2021
  

  Making a More Inclusive Disney Means Pushing Back Against the Park's History

  by Eric Avila

  Complaints about "wokeness" at Disney theme parks ignore the way that the parks' designs reflected Walt Disney's conservatism and a hierarchical view of human civilizations. 

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  9/21/2021
  

  Fin de Siecle Vienna: Art and Culture in Schorske's Century

  by Thomas Bender

  Carl Schorske's work on 19th Century Vienna was a masterwork of intellectual history that incorporated interdisciplinary approaches to politics and culture to model new approaches to scholarship in the humanities. A colleague traces his intellectual development.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/15/2021
  

  The 70s are Back, But Not How You Think

  by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff

  "In the coronavirus era, disco themes resonate. People long for community and wonder if leaders have our backs. Social media offers some of the trappings that defined disco — from the clothes to the allure of being seen in a new way."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/13/2021
  

  "Negotiated Authenticity" and the Precarious Position of Black Creators in Television History

  "Since its invention, television has shaped this country’s self-image. To the extent that we share notions of “normal,” “acceptable,” “funny,” “wrong,” and even “American,” television has helped define them. For decades, Black writers were shut out of the rooms in which those notions were scripted."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/27/2021
  

  The "Candyman" Reboot Subverts Cinematic Tropes of Black Suffering

  Director Nia DaCosta, with co-writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, has turned the problematic racial framing of its predecessor on its head, and casts critical light on the treatment of Black characters throughout the history of film. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/27/2021
  

  EBay Deletes the Queer Past

  The online auction company's decision may make it difficult for historians of LGBTQ cultures and of sexuality to build archives of historically signicant erotica. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/27/2021
  

  When Europe Gave its Ears to Black American Composers

  by Kira Thurman

  In the wake of World War II many Black American classical composers found welcoming audiences in Europe, but their experiences should not overshadow the ways European cultural institutions have marginalized domestic Black artists.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/23/2021
  

  Simone de Beauvoir's Lost Novel of Early Love

  “I loved Zaza with an intensity which could not be accounted for by any established set of rules and conventions,” Beauvoir recalled in her memoirs, almost thirty years after her friend’s death. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/31/2021
  

  "Respect" Highlights the Other Black Women Artists who Helped Aretha Franklin Become the Queen of Soul

  by Fredara M. Hadley

  "Black women, even female Black entertainers, are rarely accorded that sense of control over their own lives. But as Aretha Franklin’s longevity in music and life demonstrated, the possibilities are endless when Black women are the center of their own universe."

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/9/2021
  

  Blue Collar Is a Dark Masterpiece of Working-Class Cinema

  The 1978 film "Blue Collar" is an important but overlooked document of a moment of crisis for the American working class. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  6/29/2021
  

  The World’s Museums Are Working Out How to Remember the Pandemic

  Trends upward for vaccination and downward for new infections mean that people are able to return to in-person museum visits. Are they ready to view exhibitions on the pandemic? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/15/2021
  

  The Freeing of the American Mind

  Louis Menand joins Ezra Klein's podcast to discuss his new book and the intellectual history of the cold war era. 

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• 6/20/2021
  

  "Juke": Bluesman Bobby Rush on the Roots of Rock and Roll

  by Bobby Rush with Herb Powell

  Blues musician Bobby Rush's new autobiography chronicles his life and career, and the way that the appropriation of Black music into American popular culture often left Black entertainers behind. Read here how he remembers the roots of rock and roll.