Departments

;

Cliopatria

  • Oct 13, 2011

    Hey OHA Members: A Request

    by Cliopatria

    The Oral History Association is meeting in Denver this week. I assume there will be discussions about the Boston College subpoenas, and I invite anyone attending the meeting to send me reports about those discussions to be posted here. I can be reached at cbray (at) ucla (dot) edu. Or just post a comment here.

  • Oct 10, 2011

    MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman

    by Cliopatria

    "In MetaMaus, Spiegelman employs prose, drawings, documents, and photographs to trace the intersecting paths of history, family, and comics that led to the creation, twenty-five years ago, of Maus, his Pulitzer Prize winning comic book about the Holocaust."
    Pantheon Books published MetaMaus on October 4th. There is additional material from the book and bonus DVD on Art Spiegelman's Facebook page: Facebook.com/ArtSpiegelman.
  • Oct 10, 2011

    Things Noted Here & There

    by Cliopatria

    Caleb Crain, "On Not Letting Go," Paris Review Daily, 6 October: "Writing tries to fix the past—to hold it in place and sometimes in imagination to improve it."

    Jerome Groopman, "The Body and Human Progress," NYRB, 27 October, reviews Robert Floud's, Robert W. Fogel's, Bernard Harris's, and Sok Chul Hong's The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700.

    Michiko Kakutani, "Gun Control and Gun Rights Stay Fighting Words," NYT, 9 October, reviews Adam Winkler's Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

  • Oct 8, 2011

    Weak Endnotes

    by Cliopatria

    Mary Beard, "Alexander: How Great?" NYRB, 27 October, reviews Pierre Briant's Alexander the Great and His Empire: A Short Introduction, trans. by Amélie Kuhrt, Philip Freeman's Alexander the Great, James Romm's Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire, Romm, ed., The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander, trans. by Pamela Mensch, and Ian Worthington's Philip II of Macedonia.

  • Oct 5, 2011

    Boston College (Cont.): Paging the Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar

    by Cliopatria

    A few quick updates regarding the federal subpoenas of oral history materials at Boston College:

    1.) Irish-American organizations are seeking meetings with members of Congress to raise questions about the DOJ's handling of the request for subpoenas under the terms of the US-UK MLAT. See this story for details. These meetings finally offer a political response to a transparently political investigation, and they represent a hugely positive development. This course of action is exactly the one I had hoped to see the AHA, AAUP, and other academic organizations pursue several months ago. But at least someone is willing to make a stand for the integrity and independence of academic research, while academics are apparently not interested. I'm still confused by that last part.

  • Oct 4, 2011

    Modern History Notes

    by Cliopatria

    In light of the job market, Anthony T. Grafton and Jim Grossman, "No More Plan B," Perspectives, October, calls for a revision of graduate programs in history. There's further discussion at Scott Jaschik's "‘No More Plan B'," IHE, 3 October, including comments by the President of the MLA and Vice President of the ACLS.

    Robert M. Solow, "Working in the Dark," TNR, 28 September, reviews Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius.

  • Oct 2, 2011

    Historical Memory Suggests Some Predictable Outcomes

    by Cliopatria

    Four years ago, I predicted a wave of deficiency judgments against homeowners who lost their homes in foreclosure proceedings but still found themselves owing money to their mortgage lender. That prediction was based on past occurrences of the same thing.

    So here's an Oct. 1 story from the Wall Street Journal on the rising wave of deficiency judgments in precisely those circumstances.