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Cliopatria

  • Dec 6, 2005

    The Keyword Revolution

    by Cliopatria

    Over the last couple of weeks I've been learning how to play with Google Print. Although the Print database is certainly not exhaustive, I've been blown away by how many books that interest me--from both trade and academic publishers--are available for full-text searching. And I've been even more impressed by the interface. You can see full-page images of published material, with your keywords highlighted on the page.

    Of course, to have access
  • Dec 5, 2005

    lynching and a political synthesis

    by Cliopatria

    Noted and worth reading: Michael Bérubé of Penn State on James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and lynching. In passing, Bérubé notes

    far too many white Americans believed that lynching was a positively good thing that they should commemorate with celebratory photographs and postcards

    I sometimes use a postcard of a lynchin

  • Dec 5, 2005

    Sweet Dreams are made of these

    by Cliopatria

    In La mémoire collective, Maurice Halbwachs doubted that universal(izing) history could be anything more that an intellectual project. So vast, so ancient, it lacked the texture and urgency that national history had in the popular consciousness.
    History can present itself as the universal memory of humanity. But there is no universal memory. All collective memory is supported by a group that is limited in space and time. One cannot collect into one tableau the totality of
  • Dec 5, 2005

    With Friends Like These . . .

    by Cliopatria

    In 1958, a great year for Democrats nationally, Minnesota DFL congresswoman Coya Knutson lost her seat, in part because her husband, Andy, issued two public letters pleading"Coya come home." The letters also hinted that Knutson had an improper relationship with her legislative assistant.

    I was reminded of Knutson this morning reading to the front page

  • Dec 5, 2005

    Dates, Names, and Faces

    by Cliopatria

    As befits an aging lady, Cliopatria let her 2nd birthday on Saturday 3 December go unnoticed. On 3 December 2003, Welcome to My World"transblogrified" when Tim Burke, Oscar Chamberlain, and KC Johnson joined me to launch Cliopatria. Jon Dresner joined us soon thereafter and, with the addition of extraordinarily talented others, our number has grown substantially. Here's the original explanation of her name:

    <

  • Dec 4, 2005

    Our Curiously Desultory War

    by Cliopatria

    I recently posted this at my other blog home, Historiblography, and Ralph Luker suggested I posted it here. Not much history in it -- well, none at all -- but maybe still an interesting view from someone trained in history and parked at the periphery of the current war.

    Training for war, I spent an afternoon in an army classroom listening to presentations on improvised explosive devices and the insurgents who plant them. Droning through one of the inevitable PowerPoint presen
  • Dec 4, 2005

    Reproduction & geography

    by Cliopatria

    Er, no, not that kind of reproduction--academic reproduction.  The most recent issue of the Journal of the Historical Society includes an article by Brendan McConville, "Early America in a New Century: Decline, Disorder, and the State of Early American History," which argues against current claims that early American history isn't sufficiently political or military enough.  McConville concedes that the approach to politics and military history is

  • Dec 4, 2005

    LaNitra Walker: Review of Jean Baker's Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists

    by Cliopatria

    [LaNitra Walker is a doctoral candidate in art history at Duke University.]

    Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about what it means to be a feminist. More specifically, American women are trying to find new and better ways to strike a balance between careers and motherhood at a time when more women are wondering whether the glass ceilings that kept their mothers in the kitchen and out of the boardroom are actually broken or just cracked. As the debate rages in venues ranging from tel
  • Dec 4, 2005

    Re-Enactment

    by Cliopatria

    It's been 18 months since we had a serious discussion at Cliopatria about re-enactment as a way of doing history. I pointed out then that, in the broadest sense, the services of many religious communities, as well as much of our best theater, art, and music, are re-enactment. Still, my sense is that it's fairly rare for academic historians to participate in re-enactment. O
  • Dec 3, 2005

    A Carnival and a Question

    by Cliopatria

    As Ralph notes below (scooped again, damn!), Another Damned Medievalist has Carnivalesque XI up, and it's a veritable festival of Western Civilization! Not much of the rest of the world, though. That's not a criticism of the carnival or its Mistresses: I went looking for things to submit and came up pretty dry, as well. It's just that there's not, as near as I can tell, a lot of ancient/medieval blogging (in English)

  • Dec 3, 2005

    a Late Entry for Historians in the News

    by Cliopatria

    I have not been on the ball as much as I should this Fall, and I discovered that I had let a notable date slip past me. But then, so, I believe, did HNN’s editors. Nowhere in the last month weeks the Historians in the News Column pointed out that October 3, 2005 was Gore Vidal’s 80th birthday (see for example, Marc Cooper’s interview wiht Vidal in the November 7, 2005 THE NATION, “Gore Vidal, Octacontrarian” (www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/
  • Dec 3, 2005

    High Fives

    by Cliopatria

    The New York Timesfive best non-fiction books of 2005 includes four works of history: George Packer, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq; Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann, De Kooning: An American Master; Jonathan Harr, The Lost Painting; and Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. At Ghost in the Machine,
  • Dec 2, 2005

    New York News

    by Cliopatria

    Today, NYU's striking graduate students are holding a rally to denounce President Sexton's announcement that strikers who don't return to the classroom by Dec. 5th won't receive spring-term teaching assignments. One striker complained,"President [John] Sexton is refusing to acknowledge the importance of self-determination and democracy, and wants to turn this university into a corporation instead." The stri