Departments

;

Cliopatria

  • Nov 5, 2005

    FIRE Turns Ten

    by Cliopatria

    I'll be at FIRE's tenth anniversary celebration this evening in Philadelphia. The event is both encouraging and depressing at the same time--encouraging, because of all the good work FIRE has done, depressing because the state of the academy is such that an organization like FIRE is still very much needed.

    A few of FIRE's recent cases: assisting a lawsuit against Troy University's speech code (which bans, among other items,"gossip"); p

  • Nov 4, 2005

    NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 11, #42; 4 NOVEMBER 2005)

    by Cliopatria

    by Bruce Craig (editor) with Nathaniel Kulyk
    NATIONAL COALITION FOR HISTORY (NCH)
    Website at http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~nch

    1. SENATE APPROVES EDUCATION BILL
    2. ROSA PARKS HONORED AT THE CAPITOL
    3. BRADEMAS CENTER CONVENES SYMPOSIUM ON PRESIDENTIAL AND PUBLIC PAPERS
    4. ISOO HOLDS SYMPOSIUM ON EXECUTIVE ORDER 12958
    5. MCMILLEN SELECTED AS TOP ASSISTANT TO ARCHIVIST WEINSTEIN
    6. OAH LAUNCHES DEPU
  • Nov 4, 2005

    MODERN MAN CARNEGIE MUSEUM EXHIBITION STAKES A CLAIM FOR LUKE SWANK'S PLACE IN HISTORY

    by Cliopatria

    He had "the face of a plumber and the soul of a poet."

    This description of Luke Swank was relayed by a relative of the late photographer to Howard Bossen as he was wrapping up his research. Bossen is guest curator of the exhibition "Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer," which opens Saturday at Carnegie Museum of Art, and author of a book by the same title published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

    The family member, who identified herself as a c
  • Nov 4, 2005

    SHA, Day II

    by Cliopatria

    Dinner at Dailey's with my friend, Randal Jelks of Calvin College, closed out a long day of history talk at the SHA convention here in Atlanta. Randal was born and raised in New Orleans, but with the interesting qualifiers that he was a black Lutheran. He manages that complicated mix of"Here I Stand,""Shake My Jelly Roll," and"I Have a Dream" about as well as anyone could.

    At a

  • Nov 3, 2005

    Cliopatria's Nightmares

    by Cliopatria

    Que je suis bête. I wrote the other day about Kenneth Hite’s “Clio’s Nightmares,” but lamented that I had no ideas for a Halloween-themed history bending post of my own. (Miriam’s Victorian Terrors more than made up for it.) It occurs to me now in the grey dawn of November that I what I should have written was “Cliopatria’s Nightmares”: not alternate histories but alternate Cliopat
  • Nov 3, 2005

    Knowing

    by Cliopatria

    [crossposted at Easily Distracted]


    Juan Cole spoke at Swarthmore last night, courtesy of War News Radio, and I was fortunate enough to have dinner with him as well.

    I thought his talk was terrifically clear, informative and useful, basically a great demonstration of what a classroom lecture can be, a skillful balancing of performa
  • Nov 3, 2005

    Carnivals

    by Cliopatria

    The next History Carnival will be hosted on 1 November by Rebecca Goetz at (a)musings of a grad student. You can check out the criteria for inclusion at the Carnival homepage (link above).

    Email your nominations for recently-published posts about historical topics, researching or teaching history, etc, to: rgoetz[at]fas[dot]harvard[dot]edu.*
    ...

  • Nov 3, 2005

    SHA Plenary

    by Cliopatria

    I just returned from the opening night of the Southern Historical Association convention here in Atlanta. Our congressman, John Lewis, was to have spoken at our opening session. But the six-and-a-half hour funeral for Rosa Parks (and that's all before they even went out to the cemetery for graveside services) kept Congressman Lewis in Detroit all day. Two days before the convention opened, SHA officials learned they had to come up with an alternative. So, we had a panel chaired by Dan Carter of
  • Nov 2, 2005

    JELLY KEEPS ROLLING RIGHT ALONG; MORTON'S 1938 COLLECTION IS RE-RELEASED IN A DIGITALLY REMASTERED BOXED SET

    by Cliopatria

    Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 Library of Congress recordings are a brilliant, bodacious account of the birth of jazz in turn-of-the-last-century New Orleans.

    Every jazz fan who has ever heard of Morton (circa 1885-1941) has also heard of or wondered about the mythic maestro's famous -- some say infamous -- recollections recorded with young folklorist Alan Lomax, who oversaw the Library of Congress' folk song archive.

    Over the decades, the Morton/Lomax recordings have been is
  • Nov 2, 2005

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Cliopatria Awards: Alun Salt at archaeoastronomy has gotten into the spirit of the Cliopatria Awards. He's doing a post on each of the six categories in which awards will be given. First up: Best History Group Blog. If Alun can do that much, you should offer some nominations. Go.

    Honest Abe: Caleb Crain,"

  • Nov 1, 2005

    Robert F. Worth: The Reporter's Arab Library

    by Cliopatria

    I FIRST saw the book more than two years ago while wandering down Mutanabi Street in Baghdad, where the booksellers gather on Friday mornings. It was a frayed paperback set among stacks of aging 1980's magazines and periodicals, the refuse of Iraq's long intellectual isolation. On the cover was a dim gold sun over sand dunes, and the title: "Arabian Sands" (1959), by Wilfred Thesiger.

    "You should buy that book," said my translator, a gaunt, bookish young man name
  • Nov 1, 2005

    Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals 1750-1900

    by Cliopatria

    The first picture you see in the exhibition Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals 1750-1900 is of a giraffe - sort of. Painted in about 1785, the creature in it has the neck of a giraffe, but its back is too long, its haunches too developed, and its legs are out of proportion to its body. Like most Europeans in the 18th century, the anonymous French artist who painted it had never seen a real giraffe. He relied on eyewitness descriptions, and on the skin of a giraffe the scientist and adventurer F
  • Nov 1, 2005

    Rome

    by Cliopatria

    THE BBC has found itself a mutually beneficial production partner in HBO, the US cable channel behind Sex and the City, Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. There would seem to be a nexus of ethos and quality between the two programme- makers, and Band of Brothers, The Gathering Storm and the recent Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras are some of the fruits of this cooperation. Only a few years ago such a close tie with an American broadcaster would have been difficult to sustain, since the commercial imper
  • Nov 1, 2005

    Hannibal Special: ENDLESS MARCHING SAPS ENERGY FROM GENERAL'S AMAZING STORY

    by Cliopatria

    Television imitates history.

    In ancient times, Hannibal's conquest of Rome was stymied by Carthage's ineffectual rulers.

    Tonight's Hannibal v Rome National Geographic special is bogged down with too much marching to keep most viewers' attention for two hours.

    The approach detracts from the story of Hannibal, one of history's greatest generals. He has been the subject of several recent books (fictional and
    historical) and a History Channel special. Ho
  • Nov 1, 2005

    David Cole: Review of John Yoo's The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11

    by Cliopatria

    [David Cole is a law professor at Georgetown and a contributor to the New York Review of Books where this piece has just appeared. He is the author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, recently published in a revised paperback edition.]

    Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the "war on terror" than John Yoo. This is a remarkable feat, because Yoo was not a cabinet official, not a White H
  • Nov 1, 2005

    Things Noted Here and There

    by Cliopatria

    History Carnival!History Carnival the Nineteenth is up at (a)musings of a grad student. While you are reveling in its goodness, don't forget to thank Rebecca Goetz for being a great host!

    Academics Ablog: Cliopatria and her friends will be represented at a conversation sponsored by the University of Southern California's Insti