historiography

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  6/6/2022
  

  Reading History for "Lessons" Misses the Point

  by Daniel Immerwahr

  "We read past authors as a sanity check. They reassure us that we’re not alone in what we see."

• 
• 5/22/2022
  

  Samuel Eliot Morison's 1950 Address Still Has Lessons About Subjectivity (Though Not All He Intended)

  by Bruce Dearstyne

  Addressing the AHA in 1950, Morison made a case that historians' authority depended on their detachment from the political controversies and cultural trends of their day; the advice can be valuable today if we also recognize Morison himself practiced it imperfectly.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/2/2022
  

  Distant Moments: Reviewing Joan Scott's "On the Judgment of History"

  by David A. Bell

  The belief in History as a force driving events toward greater enlightenment has long allowed people to punt on making judgment and taking action to future generations. Joan Scott's book examines the seductive power of this faith. 

• 
• 4/24/2022
  

  Understanding How Counterfactuals Shape Putin's Worldview and Historical Rhetoric

  by Gavriel Rosenfeld

  While historians have noted the instrumental use of history in Putin's speeches about Ukraine, more attention should be paid to his use of broad counterfactuals that, however they oversimplify historical contingency, successfully evoke politically potent emotions like regret, relief and fear. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  4/11/2022
  

  The People Who Decide What Becomes History

  by Louis Menand

  Richard Cohen's "Making History: The Storytellers who Shaped the Past" puts the subjectivity of the historian at the center of how history becomes a modern society's set of myths about itself. 

• 
• 3/13/2022
  

  "What If": The Uses and Abuses of Counterfactuals about Ukraine

  by Gavriel Rosenfeld

  Counterfactuals can be a useful tool for historical thinking when they highlight contingency. But they can be abused because they tap into emotional needs to place blame and fantasies about what might have been. 

• 
• SOURCE: Cincinnati Enquirer
  2/5/2022
  

  Amplifying Voices on the Margins: Researching Cincinnati's Black History

  Howard University's Nikki M. Taylor explains that the primary sources are often rife with racist perspectives, but can still offer insight into how local Black communities have worked for self-determination. 

• 
• 1/20/2022
  

  Kathleen Belew Asked How Historical Subfields Would Approach the Chicken Crossing the Road...

  Historians had thoughts on their subfields – click in the embedded Tweet to read the replies.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/7/2022
  

  Nine Decades Later, Critics of DuBois's "Black Reconstruction" Rehash Old Claims

  by Martha S. Jones

  For a new wave of critics, it's 1935 all over again, proving the ongoing vitality of DuBois's pioneering work. 

• 
• SOURCE: Aeon
  12/16/2021
  

  What "Big History" Misses

  by Ian Hesketh

  "Big History" has become established in the popular media and in some academic quarters, telling global-scale narratives of human and even planetary history. After 30 years, it's time to evaluate its successes and failures. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  12/14/2021
  

  The Right's 1877 Project

  Helen Andrews's recent "American Conservative" column revives the myths that Reconstruction was a "tragic era" and that Black disenfranchisement was a force for progress, troubling indicators of the current right's views of democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  12/8/2021
  

  The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History

  by Lauren Michele Jackson

  "In spite of all of the ugly evidence it has assembled, the 1619 Project ultimately seeks to inspire faith in the American project, just as any conventional social-studies curriculum would."

• 
• 12/5/2021
  

  On Writing The Bright Ages

  by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

  The authors of a new book reconsidering the history of the medieval world describe how the project came about and how the work of writing history benefits by collaboration.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  11/18/2021
  

  The Storm over the American Revolution

  by Eric Herschthal

  By shoehorning his recent book on the Revolutionary War into the space of the debate about slavery and the founding, critics of Woody Holton are missing important points about the importance of indigenous land to the founding and the global context of colonial independence.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  11/10/2021
  

  The Changing Same of U.S. History

  by David Waldstreicher

  Historians have returned to the question of whether the Constitution is the problem or the solution with renewed vigor and high stakes. Those accusing ideological rivals of "doing politics, not history" are not innocent of the same charge. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/9/2021
  

  NYT Magazine's Silverstein: 1619 Is Part of Long Battle over Telling the Nation's Story

  by Jake Silverstein

  The continuing debate over the 1619 project shows that what we call "history" is inseparable from the process of historiography, which has never been free of bitter conflict and disagreement.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  10/30/2021
  

  The Historians are (Still) Fighting

  by Willam Hogeland

  Inside the recent Massachusetts Historical Society dustup between Gordon Wood and Woody Holton over the significance of slavery to the American Revolution, and what it means for the public perception of history. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  9/21/2021
  

  Fin de Siecle Vienna: Art and Culture in Schorske's Century

  by Thomas Bender

  Carl Schorske's work on 19th Century Vienna was a masterwork of intellectual history that incorporated interdisciplinary approaches to politics and culture to model new approaches to scholarship in the humanities. A colleague traces his intellectual development.

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/7/2021
  

  History Won't Judge: Joan C. Scott and Passing the Buck

  by Kirsten Weld

  Poor Clio, the muse of history, has been tasked with the passing of retrospective judgments that we in the here-and-now are unwilling to make. Unfortunately, that's not how history works. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  8/30/2021
  

  Racial Metaphors: Between 'Colorblindness' and 'Racism in our DNA'

  by Nikhil Pal Singh

  "If racism is a type of code, it is more like malware, introduced into and then inherited from history and human decision-making, not nature."