primary sources

• 
• 10/4/2020
  

  The Etymology of "Jazz": A Cautionary Word About Digital Sources

  by Ken Lawrence

  Digitization projects have made historical newspapers much more readily accessible, but the process admits error and historians should be cautious making bold claims based on them. 

• 
• SOURCE: YouTube
  9/29/2020
  

  Bawdy Civil War Letters, In the Style of Ken Burns

  by Katie Hemphill

  Historian Katie Hemphill's recent crash course in video editing for Zoom teaching let her fulfill a longtime goal: set the bawdiest Civil War letters she found in her research to the stirring sounds of documentary music. Content Warning: Cuss Words.

• 
• SOURCE: National Council on Public History
  9/17/2020
  

  Inside Journal of the Plague Year's COVID-19 Curatorial Collective

  by Rebecca S. Wingo

  Creating a public digital archive of the COVID pandemic isn't a simple undertaking. A public historian leading the effort discusses how it's developed and how to be involved. 

• 
• SOURCE: Muckrock
  9/16/2020
  

  Dive Into John F. Kennedy’s Daily CIA Updates

  Muckrock invites interested historians and history enthusiasts to participate in a project to make declassified Presidential intelligence briefings more widely accessible. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/4/2020
  

  A Secret Diary Chronicled the ‘Satanic World’ That Was Dachau

  For two years, a prisoner in the German concentration camp kept a journal that would later be used to convict those who had persecuted him and killed his fellow prisoners.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/6/2020
  

  ‘It is Getting Better Now’: Family Letters from the Deadly 1918 Flu Pandemic

  Americans throughout the country are climbing attic stairs, descending into dusty basements and flipping through folders in old filing cabinets to seek words of everyday wisdom from ancestors who have suffered through something like this before.

• 
• SOURCE: Yale News
  8/18/2020
  

  Alan Trachtenberg, Pioneered New Ways of Understanding American Culture

  Trachtenberg is best known as one of the most distinguished and authoritative interpreters of what photographers have shown about history through the camera lens.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine
  8/17/2020
  

  Read Thousands of Abraham Lincoln’s Newly Transcribed Letters Online

  The missives, preserved by the Library of Congress, include notes to and from the beloved president.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  Experiencing War Far From the Battlefield

  Two new books examine unexpected facets of World War II. 

• 
• SOURCE: National Security Archive
  8/4/2020
  

  The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

  Extensive Compilation of Primary Source Documents Explores Manhattan Project, Eisenhower’s Early Misgivings about First Nuclear Use, Curtis LeMay and the Firebombing of Tokyo, Debates over Japanese Surrender Terms, Atomic Targeting Decisions, and Lagging Awareness of Radiation Effects

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  7/7/2020
  

  “A Keen Vision and Feeling of All Ordinary Life”: Pandemic Journaling in the History Classroom

  by Michelle Orihel

  Since memory is essential to functioning in our daily lives, we all think historically to survive, even if only to question ourselves: “Did I pay that bill yesterday?” In answering that question, we reconstruct yesterday’s actions in our minds and perhaps even search for physical (or in today’s case, digital) evidence of that task. There it is — historical thinking!

• 
• SOURCE: Vice
  5/17/2020
  

  ASU Historians Founded "Journal of the Plague Year" to Document the Pandemic in Real Time

  Historians Katherine Landdeck and Mark Tebeau weigh in on the importance of chronicling all types of experiences, no matter how mundane they may seem.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  5/4/2020
  

  Letters From The 1918 Pandemic (Podcast)

  In this podcast, medical historian Dr. Howard Markel shares lessons to be learned from the 1918 flu outbreak, and podcast host shares 102-year-old letters from her aunt's family.

• 
• 5/3/2020
  

  Lessons on Isolation and Humanity in a Family's Letters from Hiding

  by Daphne Geismar

  A virus doesn’t discriminate. But our social structures, systemic biases, and policy choices have made some populations particularly vulnerable. This pandemic has changed us. We must make changes so this tragedy, like the Holocaust, isn’t repeated.

• 
• 4/26/2020
  

  Teaching During a Pandemic – a Century Ago

  by John Marsh

  In letters the author's grandmother wrote to her beau in the Army between 1918 and 1919, the flu was a constant subject. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/17/2020
  

  A History Professor Gave Students an Unusual Assignment. Here are the Results.

  Kevin Mitchell Mercer prompted a revealing Twitter conversation among history teachers in K-12 and higher education about this moment and how to capture it for students in class.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  4/13/2020
  

  What We Can Learn from 1918 Influenza Diaries

  Historians including Kevin Levin, Nancy Bristow and Lora Vogt reflect on what people today can do to help historians of the future understand life during the COVID crisis. 

• 
• SOURCE: WAMU
  4/10/2020
  

  Historians Want Your Pandemic Journals And Photos ‘In Real Time’

  “There will always be official records,” says Anne McDonough. “But the thoughts and the responses and the impact on everyday, local people, if it is not actively collected, unfortunately that will go by the wayside.”

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2020
  

  The Quarantine Diaries

  Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian.com
  6/18/19
  

  This Long-Ignored Document, Written by George Washington, Lays Bare the Legal Power of Genealogy

  by Karin Wulf

  In Washington’s Virginia, family was a crucial determinant of social and economic status, and freedom.