cultural history

• 
• 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? 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  6/9/2021
  

  The Last Time There Was a Craze About UFOs and Aliens

  by Daniel N. Gullotta

  A recent resurgence of interest in UFOs in respectable public discourse recalls the 1990s, when the X Files reflected a similar moment of distrust in authority and conspiratorial thinking. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  5/20/2021
  

  Iconic Mint-Condition 1933 Babe Ruth Baseball Is Expected To Shatter Auction Records

  "My dad began collecting in the early 1980s starting with baseball cards from 1957 and 1959 when he was ten to twelve years old," his son Stewart Newman said. "Those were replacements for the treasured cards of his youth that he kept in shoeboxes as a youngster and that his mom later threw out."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/17/2021
  

  Tracing the African Diaspora in Food

  Jessica B. Harris's book "High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America" traces the African diaspora through food cultures. It will debut as a Netflix series next week. 

• 
• SOURCE: Lapham's Quarterly
  4/28/2021
  

  Weary of Work

  by Emily K. Abel

  Historian Emily Abel's book on fatigue deals in part with how Progressive era reformers approached the problem of the tired industrial worker. Ultimately, they favored solutions that emphasized efficiency and management, undercutting the ability of the labor movement to demand shorter work hours. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/19/2021
  

  ‘If We Don’t Adapt, We Will Wither Away’: Louis Menand on the University

  "What we teach in the liberal arts — hermeneutics, history, and theory — are intended to help you do this. Professional schools don’t teach these things. You are not going to learn them anywhere else."

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  4/12/2021
  

  Are you ready for the Roaring '20s?

  by Nicole Hemmer

  The end of the pandemic may portend a repeat of the "roaring 20s" a century later. But anyone anticipating a wild party should recall the nativism, racism, and rampant inequality of the era. Can the individual desire to live life to the fullest support a politics of inclusion and equality? 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/14/2021
  

  How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)

  by Evan Kindley

  Before lamenting the death of "freedom" as the highest social ideal, it's important to reckon seriously with what the term means outside of the context of the Cold War.

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/1/2021
  

  Runaway American Dreams

  by Dennis M. Hogan

  What does it say about American liberalism that it's cultural tribune, Bruce Springsteen, is doing a corporate-sponsored podcast with the former President of the United States? 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/26/2021
  

  Morris Dickstein, Critic and Cultural Historian, Dies at 81

  Morris Dickstein was a fierce advocate for the necessity of cultural criticism as part of public discourse, to elevate public understanding of art above the vagaries of hype and trend. 

• 
• 3/7/2021
  

  When Did America Stop Being Great?

  by Nick Bryant

  Nick Bryant began observing America as a 16 year old at the patriotic spectacle of the 1984 Olympics. His book traces the path from "Morning in America" to "American Carnage," fixing some blame but also seeking a way through. 

• 
• SOURCE: them.
  2/23/2021
  

  These Portraits Revolutionized the Way Queer Women Were Seen in the 1970s

  Joan E. Biren (known as JEB) published a collection of photographs of lesbians in 1979, a pioneering representation of queer women living openly. It will be reissued in March with retrospective essays. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/9/2020
  

  Jill Biden Is a Teacher. And She’s Not About to Change That

  Cultural historians Stephanie Coontz, Betty Boyd Caroli and Katherine Jellison discuss the historical roles occupied by First Ladies and the ways the position has and will change. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  12/9/2020
  

  What Attacks on Science Get Wrong

  by Andrew Jewett

  Reductive diagnoses of a "war on science" ignore the specific political and cultural stakes of controversies around vaccination, climate, or creationism. 

• 
• SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute
  12/9/2020
  

  From Fish House Punch to Bud Light: America’s Long, Complicated Relationship with Alcohol (Web Event, 12/17)

  To mark the centennial of Prohibition, please join AEI’s Kevin R. Kosar for a conversation exploring how alcohol has influenced America’s economy, politics, and culture.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/8/2020
  

  America’s Most Hated Garment

  Atlantic writer Amanda Mull turns to fashion historians Marley Healy and Valerie Steele to place the growing social acceptance of sweatpants in a pattern of clothing standards changing in response to cultural influences and social conditions. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  12/8/2020
  

  How Americans Came to Distrust Science

  by Andrew Jewett

  Scientists and their supporters cannot overcome the current moment of hostility toward their profession and rejection of their expertise unless they confront the cultural history of skepticism toward science, in both conservative and liberal forms. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  12/1/2020
  

  The Struggle to Document COVID-19 for Future Generations

  by Pamela Ballinger

  Images of suffering have been powerful spurs to humanitarian action in history, but the process has the potential to reinforce messages of fault, blame, and separation. Assembling a visual archive of the age of COVID must avoid those traps to be useful in the future.