Departments

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COVID-19

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    8/6/2020

    America's Coronavirus Endurance Test

    by Howard Markel

    To defeat the virus, we will have to start thinking in years, not months. We must refuse to give up on flattening the curve. It’s up to us to hold the line until our government catches up.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/3/2020

    The Mask Slackers of 1918

    In 1918 and 1919, as bars, saloons, restaurants, theaters and schools were closed, masks became a scapegoat, a symbol of government overreach, inspiring protests, petitions and defiant bare-face gatherings. All the while, thousands of Americans were dying in a deadly pandemic.

  • SOURCE: Going Medieval
    7/30/2020

    On Sex with Demons

    by Eleanor Janega

    "The idea of having sex with demons or the devil... has a long and proud history. A concern about sleep sex demons traces at least as far back as Mesopotamian myth where we see the hero Gilgamesh’s father recorded on the Sumerian King List as Lilu, a demon who targets sleeping women, in 2400 BC."

  • SOURCE: NPR
    7/22/2020

    One-Third Of U.S. Museums May Not Survive The Year, Survey Finds

    Most of the museums surveyed made a point of providing educational resources to students during the lockdown. But those are precisely the kind of services that will need to be cut in the budget crunch ahead, according to almost two-thirds of museum directors.

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    7/23/2020

    Remote Reflections: One Class, 55 Classrooms

    by John Hopper

    I was pleased that the transition to entirely remote learning went well. However, there are definite drawbacks to this kind of teaching, even for someone who is used to teaching students in multiple locations. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    7/23/2020

    American Exceptionalism Was Our Preexisting Condition

    Historian Elizabeth Tandy Shermer notes that the current crisis has forced her to reexamine the questions she encourages her survey US history students to answer. The tension between Trump and state governors harkens back to the crisis that led to the Civil War. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    7/20/2020

    The Strange Defeat of the United States

    by Robert Zaretsky

    Eighty years later, Bloch’s investigation casts useful light for those historians who, gripped by the white heat of their own moment, may seek to understand the once unthinkable defeat of the United States in its “war” against the new coronavirus.