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Cliopatria

  • Oct 1, 2005

    Things Noted Here and There

    by Cliopatria

    Paul Richard,"At the National Gallery, Beautiful Beginnings," Washington Post, 30 September, reviews"Masterpieces in Miniature: Italian Manuscript Illumination from the J. Paul Getty Museum," an exhibit that has just opened in Washington. This is exceptionally good journalism, reminding us of when a book was a rare and precious thing.

    Michael Lind,"

  • Sep 30, 2005

    Miller Time

    by Cliopatria

    I was in D.C. today, and wandered past the Federal District Courthouse to see the press frenzy covering Judith Miller's testimony.

    The disgraced Times reporter gets savaged by the Washington Post, Slate, and, perhaps most cuttingly,

  • Sep 30, 2005

    Reality Bites

    by Cliopatria

    Commenters here have sharply disputed my not-very-controversial contention that the U.S. Army was facing serious recruiting shortages. The recruiting year ends today, and here's the end of the story:
    "The Army has not published official figures yet, but it apparently finished the 12-month counting period that ends Friday with about 73,000 recruits. Its goal was 80,000. A gap of 7,000 enlistees wo
  • Sep 29, 2005

    Show Us Your Majors

    by Cliopatria

    When the Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, stepped down because of his indictment on a felony indictment for criminal conspiracy, House Republicans quickly settled on the Majority Whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri, as his interim successor. I looked him up on the net and found that Blunt was a history major at Southwest Missouri Baptist University, earned an M.A. in h
  • Sep 29, 2005

    Cliopatria Welcomes James C. Cobb

    by Cliopatria

    We're pleased to welcome James C. Cobb as a Contributing Editor at Cliopatria. A former president of the Southern Historical Association, Professor Cobb is the B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at his alma mater, the University of Georgia. His books include: The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1980 (Louisiana State University Press, 1982);
  • Sep 28, 2005

    The Ferrer Flop

    by Cliopatria

    Dem mayoral nominee Fernando Ferrer had a tough day yesterday, after revelations that an entry posted under his name in his campaign blog had him falsely claiming to have been"educated in public schools for most of my education." In fact, Ferrer went to Catholic schools, and then to NYU for college. The campaign attributed the problem to an"editing error."

    During the Dem primary, Ferrer also made an odd statement about pub

  • Sep 28, 2005

    Sabbatical Blogging

    by Cliopatria

    This is a special year for me. It is my first sabbatical. After a few years in the trenches as a term-hire adjunct assistant professor living from semester to semester, and after a job change that set back the tenure clock, I finally put in the requisite time at a single institution and was awarded this oh-so-precious academic perk.

    First, of course, I'd like to thank my oh-so-supportive Department Chair and the rest of t
  • Sep 28, 2005

    Additionally Noted

    by Cliopatria

    On Saturday 1 October, Lisa Roy Vox will host History Carnival at The Apocalyptic Historian. Send your nominations of exemplary history posts since 15 September to her at vox*at*apocalyptichistorian.com.

    At Rhine River, Nathanael Robinson's"The Geographical Turn" is a series of posts on the Annales school:

  • Sep 28, 2005

    responses to the McCloy memo

    by Cliopatria

    Commander Will Hopwood has been an indefatigable, if frequently repetitive, defender of Michelle Malkin and the rightness of the wartime removal of Japanese Americans. I am oddly indebted to him for his commentary in response to my latest CLIOPATRIA post, since his combination of scurrilous attack and selective quotation goes far towards proving my point about the reflexes of the Michelle Malkin supporters.

    There is nothing terribly mysterious about the circumstances of my locating
  • Sep 27, 2005

    Norman Convicted

    by Cliopatria

    This summer, the New York state legislature passed a peculiarly rationalized plan to increase the attention to African-American studies in the US history curriculum. Without citing any evidence for his claim, the bill's sponsor, Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Clarence Norman, contended,"We feel there is, indeed, a void in our education curriculum in New York state when it comes to the issue of slavery and the de-humanization of Africans at that time" and of subsequent racism that African-Americ
  • Sep 27, 2005

    Virginia Desperation

    by Cliopatria

    It always was a longshot that VA governor Mark Warrner would challenge incumbent senator George Allen in 2006. Warner, after all, has a legitimate chance of winning the Dem presidential nomination in 2008, and it's hard to see how his candidacy would have been strengthened even by a successful race against Allen.

    But the party's bench in the Old Dominion seems rather shallow. In 2002, the Dem candidate against longtime incumbent John Warner dropped out of the race following the 9/11 attacks,

  • Sep 27, 2005

    Case Study: Teachable Moment?

    by Cliopatria

    There are all kinds of wonderful opportunities in the news to talk about epistemology, sources, evidence, etc. Teachable moments, when our students' attention is focused on something we can actually use. Sometimes we just readabout them. Sometimes we experience them.

    Back in June, my Congressional representative, Ed Case (D-HI 2), was

  • Sep 26, 2005

    More on the McCloy memo

    by Cliopatria

    As many readers know, I recently discovered in the Library of Congress a memo from Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy to Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson, dated July 23, 1942. The memo is in the form of a typed file copy, made by Patterson’s office. In a postscript (which the memo notes was “handwritten in the original”), McCloy admits that military necessity was not the main factor in the wartime removal of 110,000 Japanese Americans: “These people are not ‘internees’. They are under