IN FOCUS: July 4th Myths & History |
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HISTORY NEWS: |
- Amazement at the speed and efficacy of historical scholarship in UT dorm case:
Russell's paper -- published on the Social Science Research Network -- drew attention to William Stewart Simkins
(1842-1929), for whom a dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin was named in the 1950s. Simkins was a
longtime law professor at Texas, but before that, he and his brother helped organize the Florida branch of the
Ku Klux Klan -- an organization he defended throughout his life, including while serving as a law professor.
Russell's paper led to public discussion in Austin of the appropriateness of naming a university building for a
Klan leader. On Friday, William Powers Jr., president of the University of Texas at Austin, announced that he
will ask the university system's Board of Regents this month to change the name.... -
Inside Higher Ed (7-12-10)
- Taiwanese historian sentenced to prison for libel:
Chen Feng-yang, chairperson of the history department at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), was found
guilty of defamation charges brought by Lu Jian-rong, an ex-adjunct history professor at NTNU, after Chen allegedly
attacked Lu's reputation on NTNU's website by calling him “a historian rotten from the roots” who is “malicious,
sinful, and unforgivable” the court said.... -
China Post (Taiwan) (7-9-10)
- UMN's graduate programs face 'right-sizing' in tough times:
Faced with its own money troubles, the University of Minnesota is turning away more graduate students who would get
financial help such as teaching positions. Still welcome are those who pay their own way or pursue in-demand
studies such as biomedical sciences.... -
Minneapolis Star Tribune (7-8-10)
- Niall Ferguson: Historian warns of sudden collapse of American 'empire':
Harvard professor and prolific author Niall Ferguson opened the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival Monday with a stark
warning about the increasing prospect of the American"empire" suddenly collapsing due to the country's rising debt
level.... -
Aspen Daily News (7-6-10)
- New Ed. Dept. report documents the end of tenure:
Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure.
Innocuously titled"Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009," the report won't say it's about the
demise of tenure. But that's what it will show.
Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted:
from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007.... -
CHE (7-4-10)
- Review of Harvard Scholar's Arrest Cites Failure to Communicate:
A new review of the arrest of a prominent scholar in black studies at his own home last July blames the incident
on"failed communications" between the police officer and the scholar.... -
CHE (6-30-10)
- University of Colorado Professor Uncovers First Holocaust Liberation Photos, Highlights Overlapping
Narratives:
David Shneer, associate professor of history and director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of
Colorado at Boulder, benefited from that openness. He began researching the issue in 2002, when he visited a
photography gallery in Moscow.
The exhibition was titled"Women at War," and Shneer noticed that the photographers' names sounded Jewish. He asked
the curator, who said,"Of course they're Jewish. All the photographers were Jewish."
Before the war, many of those developing the profession of Soviet photojournalism were Jewish, Shneer noted.... -
AScribe.org (7-1-10)
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- Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer: Teaching 'W' as History
The challenges of the recent past in the classroom:
Even before the 2008 election, debate had begun about how President George W. Bush would be remembered in American
history. There were many reasons that so many people were so quickly interested in Bush's historical reputation.
Given how intensely polarized voters were about his presidency, it was natural that experts and pundits would
scramble to evaluate it. Bush's spectacular highs and lows—the stratospheric rise in his public approval following
the attacks of September 11, 2001... -
Chronicle of Higher Ed, 7-11-10
- Greg Mitchell: Andrew Bacevich, His Lost Son, and Obama's War in Afghanistan -
The Nation (7-8-10)
- Joe Conason: Sure, listen to Niall Ferguson -- but always ignore his bad advice:
As a celebrity intellectual, Ferguson much prefers the broad, bold stroke to the careful detail, so it is scarcely
surprising that he endorsed Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's"wonderful" budget template, confident that his
audience in Aspen would know almost nothing about that document.... -
Salon (7-7-10)
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REVIEWS & FIRST CHAPTERS: |
- Charles Ogletree tackles Henry Louis Gates' arrest in new book:
Harvard law professor and author Charles Ogletree, a longtime friend and colleague of Gates’, who also served as
his legal counsel in the case, examines the incident and its legal and social implications in"The Presumption of
Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America."
The book is about much more than the arrest of an acclaimed black professor. Ogletree focuses on the long, troubled
relationship between police and black men, as well as racial profiling by law enforcement and black Americans’
continuing quest for racial fairness in the criminal justice system and in everyday life. -
Philadelphia Inquirer, 7-14-10 - BARRY STRAUSS: A Failed Rebel's Long Shadow:
Now comes a distinguished contribution to the field by the British journalist and classicist Peter Stothard."Spartacus Road" is a work of history, telling us of Spartacus' life and legend, but it is also a travel book,
as Mr. Stothard follows Spartacus' rebellious path through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside.... -
WSJ, 7-10-10
- Niall Ferguson's"High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg":
There's a saying in publishing that the only brand is the author. Unquestionably Niall Ferguson is a brand,
thanks to sweeping, Big Picture, Big Idea books such as"Colossus" and"The Ascent of Money." With Ferguson,
we expect provocative interpretations of epochs, empires and civilizations.
Not this time. In"High Financier," Ferguson follows a solitary capitalist into the weeds and flowers of his
financial garden. This is no failing, of course; biography is simply a different enterprise. Rather than overarching,
it often must be minute and particular. And Siegmund Warburg was extremely particular.... -
WaPo, 7-9-10 - Jane Brox: Shining a light on the way artificial light has changed our lives: BRILLIANT The Evolution of Artificial Light
But, Jane Brox asks, at what cost? Though she celebrates human ingenuity and technical advances in"Brilliant,"
her history of artificial light, Brox also presents damning evidence that in our millennia-long quest for ever more
and brighter light, we've despoiled the natural world, abandoned our self-sufficiency and trained ourselves to sleep
and dream less while working more. It's time, Brox urges, to"think rationally about light and what it means to us."
Yes, the history of artificial light has its dark side, for those who aren't too dazzled to detect it.... -
WaPo, 7-9-10 - Christiane Bird: Book review of"The Sultan's Shadow," about a 19th-century Arab princess: THE SULTAN'S SHADOW One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West
Christiane Bird's account of the Al Busaidi sultans in Oman and Zanzibar during the 19th century is, she says,"a tale rich with modern-day themes: Islam vs. Christianity, religion vs. secularism, women's rights, human rights,
multiculturalism, and a nation's right to construct its own destiny." In truth those themes are not quite so visible
in"The Sultan's Shadow" as its author would have us believe, for despite her lucid prose and dogged research, the
book never comes together into a coherent whole. Instead, it is an oddly arranged miscellany, some parts of which
are exceptionally interesting, but she never manages to connect them to each other in a convincing fashion.... -
WaPo, 7-9-10 - Reviews of 'Romancing Miss Bronte,' 'Charlotte and Emily,' 'Jane Slayre' -
WaPo, 7-13-10
- Kim Washburn: New Palin Biography Aimed At 9- To 12-Year-Olds
'Speaking Up' Set For September Release -
WFTV, 7-9-10
- Jack Rakove on Gary B. Nash: The Ring and the Crack: The Liberty Bell Yale University Press, 242 pp., $24
It would be easy to assume that the flag and the anthem have always been the central cultural symbols of our
nationality. But in fact that has not been the case, writes Gary Nash, in this fast-moving and engaging history
of a different and, he argues, superior, symbol: the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The Pledge of Allegiance to
the flag was not composed until 1892, eventually becoming the source of daily school recitals and occasional
litigation, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s to the atheist Michael Newdow’s
more recent judicial quest. Then, too, the Stars and Stripes went through a long post-Civil War period as
something less than a banner of universal nationality. Perhaps even now, lingering Southern attachment to the
rival Stars and Bars may embody more than Confederate re-enactors’ cultural fondness for the Lost Cause. And
while the"Star Spangled Banner" was composed back in 1814, only in 1931 did it acquire its official status
as national anthem.... -
TNR, 7-2-10
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FEATURES: | - Historian calls on new generation: "There's a lot of what we do not know."
That's what Dr. Mitch Kachun said about Collins in one of his two speeches at the Juneteenth celebration at
Brandon Park on Saturday.
Kachun, a professor of history at Western Michigan University, has extensively researched local African-American
author and teacher Julia Collins.
The professor expressed being gratified he could take part in helping to finally recognize Collins' work after
140 years.
He said his research was done so he could help better understand and appreciate her life.... -
Sun Gazette, 6-20-10
- Brian Black: A Look At The U.S.'s Man-Made Environmental Disasters:
...Here are some of the country’s most notable environmental disasters with human influence, both large-scale and
small-scale, and how the government has dealt with them.... -
National Journal (7-8-10)
- A walk through history: UTEP effort highlights Hispanics' significance:
As far as historian David Romo is concerned, the streets of South El Paso represent a living textbook that can help
students understand the complexities of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
"The role of El Paso in the revolution by any criteria should be part of not only the El Paso school curriculum but
the national curriculum," Romo said."Unfortunately, it's mostly ignored by the textbooks.".... -
El Paso Times (7-6-10) - Census historian weighs in on electronic future of census:
As hundreds of thousands of workers knock on doors this summer to collect information for the 2010 Census, momentum
is mounting to drag future Censuses into the 21st century....
"Using the Postal Service was an enormous innovation in 1970" when Census forms were first mailed (previous Censuses
were door-to-door surveys), says Margo Anderson, a professor of history and urban studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an expert on Census history."We're 40 years later, and the mail isn't the official way
most people get their information or communicate. It's really outmoded."... -
USA Today (7-6-10) - Soccer historian tells of South African soccer's origins among political prisoners: "These men believed that there would be a free South Africa while they were still alive," said Chuck Korr,
an emeritus professor of history at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and the author of a book about
the soccer league called"More Than Just a Game."... -
NYT (7-5-10)
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PROFILES: | - Easton historian worked on Emmy-nominated The Pacific:
Donald L. Miller, a Lafayette College history professor, was the only person on the project who personally
interviewed Eugene Sledge, one of three Marines who fought in the Pacific on whom the series is based.... -
The Morning Call, 7-8-10
- As a historian in the House, Fred Beuttler puts current events in perspective:
Historians do not do breaking news. Historians do not do the latest scandal scoops, election-night projections,
or instant updates of Washington's winners and losers. So it is no surprise that the media's demand for historians
is scant. But every now and then, when the breaking political news from Capitol Hill is in dire need of historical
context, journalists and politicians alike go looking for Fred Beuttler... -
WaPo (7-6-10)
- 21st-century technology helps Princeton U historian John Haldon study Byzantine era:
Princeton University historian John Haldon, a leading authority on medieval Byzantine history, can't really
remember a time when history didn't intrigue him....
These days, Haldon is a professor of Byzantine history and Hellenic studies at Princeton....
NJ.com (7-5-10)
- Kelly Lytle Hernández: UCLA professor chronicles rise of U.S. Border Patrol in new book:
However, by the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. Border Patrol had shifted its focus and was concentrating
its efforts on policing undocumented Mexican immigrants, a practice that continues to this day, UCLA historian
Kelly Lytle Hernández writes in"Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol" (University of California Press, 2010).
Drawing on long-neglected archival sources in both the U.S. and Mexico, Lytle Hernández uncovers the little-known
history of how Mexican immigrants slowly became the primary focus of U.S. immigration law enforcement and
demonstrates how racial profiling of Mexicans developed in the Border Patrol's enforcement of the nation's
immigration laws.... -
UCLA Newsroom, 6-17-10
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QUOTES: |
- Richard Norton Smith, David Greenberg: When Adversity Comes Calling, Some Actually Answer the Door:
As a self-styled student of American history, Mr. Blagojevich would have a hard time comparing himself to Abraham
Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or even Gerald Ford when it comes to dealing
with duress... -
NYT, 7-11-10
- Walter Wark: Spy Swaps Not a Cold War Relic:
The Soviet Union is now gone, and Berlin is a single city in a reunited Germany. But, as intelligence historian
Walter Wark of the University of Toronto says, the latest exchange shows that spy swaps have not gone out of date.
"We have a tendency to forget that spying goes on as usual, and when spying goes on as usual, sooner or later there
will be occasion to do a spy swap," Wark said."But it's gone out of our consciousness, I think is the only thing
that's really remarkable about this. It's not that it should happen. It's just that kind of, with all the other
dangers that we're facing in a 21st century world, we've forgotten about espionage," he said.... -
VoA News (7-9-10)
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INTERVIEWS: |
- Niall Ferguson aims to shake up history curriculum with TV and war games:
History should be fun. More TV should be watched in the classroom, and children should learn through playing war
games. The Harvard academic Niall Ferguson, who has been invited by the government to revitalise the curriculum,
today sets set out a vision of"doing for history what Jamie Oliver has done for school food – make it healthy,
and so they actually want to eat it".... -
Guardian (UK) (7-9-10)
- Russian spy swap: Jeffrey Burds explains -
WaPo (7-8-10)
- Environmental historian Brian Black talks about impacts of oil spill -
Penn State Live (6-30-10)
- The end of the Soviet Union was not inevitable, says Norman Stone -
U.S. News & World Report (7-1-10)
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AWARDS &APPOINTMENTS: |
- Obama Nominates Larry Palmer, former historian, as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela:
U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Ambassador Larry Leon Palmer -- formerly the US Ambassador to
Honduras -- as the new U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela.... -
Latin American Herald Tribune (6-30-10)
- National Park Service Names New Cultural Resources Head:
National Park Service (NPS) Director Jonathan Jarvis recently named Stephanie Smith Toothman, Ph.D., as the
Service’s new Associate Director for Cultural Resources... -
Lee White at the National Coalition for history (6-28-10)
- New Director of Education Named at the Smithsonian:
Claudine K. Brown has been named director of education for the Smithsonian Institution, effective June 20.... -
Lee White at the National Coalition for History (6-28-10)
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SPOTTED: |
- James McPherson: Historian makes Gettysburg spring to life:
As I prepared last week for a tour of Civil War historic sites with 40 history teachers from northwestern
Minnesota, I looked at the itinerary and wondered if I would get anything out of touring battlefields....
The day climaxed when our group of teachers, lead by General McPherson, replicated Pickett's Charge, the famous
and futile attempt by General Lee to break the Union middle by sending a mile-wide swath of 13,000 men into the
teeth of the Federal guns.... -
Detroit Lakes Online, 7-2-10
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ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS CALENDAR: |
- July 28, 2010: Evan Thomas, Award-Winning Journalist, Historian to Lecture at Ventfort Hall:
Known nationally and internationally as one of the most respected award-winning journalists and historians
writing today, Newsweek's Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas will appear at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum
on Wednesday, July 28, as part of its 2010 Summer Lecture Series. He will discuss the subject of his new book,"The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898." Thomas will be on hand to autograph
copies during the subsequent Victorian Tea.... -
Iberkshires, 7-13-10
- September 17-18, 2010 at Notre Dame University: Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and
Latin American historians together:
An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for
papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World."From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700" is being hosted by the
university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010.
Medieval News, 4-29-10
- Jeff Shesol to give Jackson Lecture at the Chautauqua Institution:
Historian,
presidential speechwriter and author Jeff Shesol will deliver Chautauqua Institution's sixth annual Robert H.
Jackson Lecture on the Supreme Court of the United States. Jeff Shesol will give the Jackson Lecture on Wednesday,
August 18, 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy.... -
John Q. Barrett at the Jackson List (6-14-10)
- Thousands of Studs Terkel interviews going online:
The Library of Congress will digitize the Studs Terkel Oral History Archive, according to the agreement,
while the museum will retain ownership of the roughly 5,500 interviews in the archive and the copyrights to the
content.
Project officials expect digitizing the collection to take more than two years.... -
NYT, 5-13-10
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Digital Southern Historical Collection:
The 41,626 scans reproduce diaries, letters, business records, and
photographs that provide a window into the lives of Americans in the
South from the 18th through mid-20th centuries.
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BEST SELLERS (NYT): |
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BOOKS COMING SOON: |
- Jane Brox: Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, (Hardcover), July 8, 2010.
- Rudy Tomedi: General Matthew Ridgway, (Hardcover), July 30, 2010.
- Richard Toye: Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made,
(Hardcover), August 3, 2010.
- Alexander Hamilton: The Federalist Papers, (Hardcover), August 16, 2010
- Christopher Tomlins,
Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865
(Paperback and Hardcover), September 1, 2010
- Holger Hoock: Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850,
(Hardcover), September 1, 2010
- Anna Whitelock: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen, (Hardcover), September 7, 2010
- James L. Swanson: Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse,
(Hardcover), September 28, 2010
- Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (First Trade Paper Edition),
(Paperback), September 28, 2010
- Ron Chernow: Washington: A Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010
- George William Van Cleve:
A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic,
(Hardcover), October 1, 2010.
- John Keegan: The American Civil War: A Military History, (Paperback),
October 5, 2010
- Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, (Hardcover), October 5, 2010
- Robert M. Poole: On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery,
(Paperback), October 26, 2010
- Robert Leckie: Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War,
(Paperback), October 26, 2010
- Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, (Hardcover), November 9, 2010
- Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party,
1917-39, (Hardcover), November 10, 2010
- Elizabeth White: The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1917-39,
(Hardcover), November 10, 2010
- G. J. Barker-Benfield: Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility,
(Hardcover), November 15, 2010
- Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt, (Hardcover), November 23, 2010
- Michael Goldfarb:
Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance,
(Paperback), November 23, 2010
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DEPARTED: |
- Stan Katz: Barry D. Karl and the Historical Profession:
My friend and long-time historical collaborator Barry Karl died while undergoing emergency open-heart surgery in
Chicago early this week. Barry would have celebrated his eighty-third birthday on the 23rd of this month -- which
will be the date of the first birthday of his only grandchild, Ethan. It is too bad that he could not have lived
longer, but he had a long, successful and interesting career.... -
Stan Katz in the CHE (7-11-10)
- Ramon Eduardo Ruiz dies at 88; historian of Mexico and Latin America at UC San Diego:
Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, a renowned historian of Mexico and Latin America whose books included in-depth studies of the
Mexican and Cuban revolutions, has died. He was 88.... -
LA Times (7-10-10)
- Lawrence Holiday Harris, historian and diplomat, dies at 89:
Lawrence Harris, who had careers as an American diplomat, an army officer and a college professor, visited 52
countries and every continent.... -
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (7-7-10)
- Ann Waldron, Biographer of Southern Writers, Is Dead at 85:
Ann Waldron, who wrote biographies of Southern writers and books for children and young adults, but then — at 78 —
decided that she’d rather concoct tales about gruesome murders on the campus of Princeton University, died Friday
at her home in Princeton, N.J. She was 85.... -
NYT (7-6-10)
- Death of historian and art author Carola Hicks, 68:
A famous Cambridge art historian has died at the age of 68.... -
Cambridge News (UK) (6-28-10)
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