Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

Source: Vanessa Varin for AHA Today
2-5-13

Emancipation Proclamation Sesquicentennial Events Offer a Window into Current Historiography Debate

Vanessa Varin is Assistant Editor, Web and Social Media at the American Historical Association.January 1, 2013, marked the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the general historical consensus is that slavery was at the root of the conflict, questions about the role of the proclamation in defining the Civil War and 19th century race relations continue to dominate the field. In the past few weeks, Washington, D.C., has hosted two events on the topic: A panel discussion at the National Archives (NARA), chaired by Annette Gordon-Reed and featuring James Oakes, Eric Foner, James McPherson, and Ed Ayers, and a more intimate lecture led by Foner at the Wilson Center and sponsored by the National History Center. The well-attended events were an opportunity to promote this history to the public, and a window into the current state of the debate over how we should understand the document and its centrality to the Civil War.  

Source: The Way of Improvement Leads Home
2-5-13

Jeff McLurken -- blending history and technology in the classroom

Anyone familiar with the small but vibrant community of digital historians knows the name Jeff McLurken.  He is the chair of the History and American Studies Department at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, VA and an example for all historians interested in embracing the digital age. The Mary Washington University website is running a profile of McClurken that is worth a look.  Here is a taste: His creative and tech-savvy charges have a say in everything from the syllabus to assignments and provide insight on the new and innovative courses taught by the associate professor and chair in the Department of History and American Studies. McClurken, an expert in Civil War history and a sought-after presenter on digital learning, says the experience is just as beneficial for him as it is for the students.

Source: Yahoo News
2-4-13

Hero or villain? Historians debate the legacy of King Richard III

...Described as "deformed" and "unfinish'd", jealous, and ambitious hunchback in Shakespeare's play, which was first performed in the 1590s, it is difficult to know if the man the playwright said battled on foot and cried out "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!", is a true reflection of the king, or merely a creation of imagination.According to scientists at the University of Leicester, there is evidence of curvature of the spine - suggesting the unattractive quality had not been a slander by those who opposed Richard....Historian Suzannah Lipscomb wrote in a BBC online article: "It is not surprising that for centuries Richard III has been synonymous with evil tyranny and physical deformity."To argue otherwise has been to take on three of history's greats - Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill, all of whom argued that Richard had been a man with a crooked back and a crooked life."...

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
2-4-13

Stanley Karnow, Journalist and Historian of Vietnam, Dies at 87

Stanley A. Karnow, a nationally acclaimed author and journalist whose seminal books about Vietnam and the Philippines during times of war have been taught in many college classrooms, died in Potomac, Md., on January 27. He was 87 and had been suffering from congestive heart failure.For more than a decade and a half, Mr. Karnow worked in Southeast Asia as a correspondent for Time, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, The London Observer, The Washington Post, and NBC News.In 1983, Mr. Karnow published a 750-page book, Vietnam: A History, that focused primarily on the United States' role in that country. Mr. Karnow's work was praised for its straightforward and thoughtful account of a war that began with an attack on a French garrison in 1954 and ended in 1975, soon after the final withdrawal of U.S. service members....

Source: John Feehery in The Hill
1-30-13

John Feehery apologizes to Michael Bechloss over presidential rankings remark

John Feehery is President of Communications and Director of Government Affairs for Quinn Gillespie and Associates, Washington, D.C.'s top public affairs firm.

Source: Eunice Williams in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
2-4-13

Life as a Captive of the Job Market

Eunice Williams is the pseudonym of a Ph.D. candidate in history at a Southern university. She is working as a writing fellow while she searches for her first tenure-track job or a postdoctoral appointment. Her first three columns in this series were "In Which the Academic Market Looms," "Going Rogue," and "In the Thick of It."The academic job market is an exercise in captivity, and I am still its prisoner.To some extent I've ensured my place in this life by acceding to the terms of academe. I've defended my dissertation, and so I've unofficially transformed myself from Eunice Williams, Ph.D. candidate, to Dr. Williams. Even if I'm befuddled by the job market, I've still agreed to abide by the rules of the game.The problem, I think, is that I'm still not sure that I've learned all of the rules. I had a campus interview in December that seemed to go well, but, alas, I got no offer out of it. It felt good to practice my job talk, to see what it was like to meet with potential colleagues, and to learn the etiquette of breaking bread with search-committee members....

Source: Jasmine Alinder for TeachingHistory.org
1-29-13

Turning students into historians in Milwaukee for a civil rights project

Jasmine Alinder is Associate Professor of History, Coordinator of Public History, and Director of Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Milwaukee, WI, has an important civil rights history that not many people know about. In the 1960s, battles raged here over open housing and school desegregation, and teens led much of the movement. Decades later, we still suffer from racial and economic segregation, but how many of our students can explain why? And what would it mean to them to find out that in 1960s Milwaukee, youth protested such inequality?

Source: Inside Higher Ed
2-4-13

Inside Higher Ed interviews Robert Townsend

The historical enterprise -- that is, the work of historians, in any sphere -- has become too divided, even splintered, Robert Townsend believes. While the American Historical Association was founded with the intent of bringing together "professors, teachers, specialists, and others" (according to its original call, in 1884), today the profession of history is seen as synonymous with the work of professors at research universities -- to the detriment of the discipline as a whole.Townsend ought to know whereof he speaks: he is the deputy director of the AHA, where he has worked for over 20 years; he is also the author of numerous studies on the state of the historical profession.In his new book, History's Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940 (University of Chicago Press), Townsend traces the beginnings and growth of what he calls the "professional shift," in which historical work splintered into separate professions: academic research, teaching, and public history....

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
2-4-13

Visiting professorships take on new uses in changing market

Stan Nadel sat with fellow historians around a lunch table as they introduced themselves one by one. His peers were greeted with warm nods and smiles, but when he stated his name, Mr. Nadel was met with surprise. The man across from him clapped his hand over his mouth."What the hell?" Mr. Nadel says he thought, recalling that moment. It was 1997, and he was attending a history conference in Oklahoma.The lunch mate had graduated from a Ph.D. program at the University of Hawaii, a place Mr. Nadel had never visited. Perhaps the young man was familiar with Mr. Nadel's publications, he thought. Maybe he was a former colleague or a student.It turned out, Mr. Nadel said, that the man had no connection to him at all. The stranger had recently accepted a one-year teaching appointment off the tenure track, which had prompted a colleague to warn him of Mr. Nadel's experience....

Source: Arutz Sheva
1-23-13

Historians probe Vienna Philharmonic's Nazi past

The Vienna Philharmonic said Tuesday that it has assigned three historians the task of investigating the prestigious orchestra's Nazi past following revelations about its honoring of war criminals.Fritz Truempi, Oliver Rathkolb and Bernadette Mayrhofer will look into the "politicization" of the Austrian orchestra from 1938-1945, the fate of Jewish musicians and "deNazification" afterwards, a statement said, as quoted by AFP....

Source: National Review
1-29-13

National Review lauds Timothy Messer-Kruse for Haymarket books

George Leef writes for the National Review.In the current National Review, John J. Miller has a fascinating  piece about history professor Timothy Messer-Kruse. Messer-Kruse became interested in finding out all that he could about the famous Haymarket Incident, which is an important part of the left/progressive narrative about the plight of labor in 19th-century America. The presumption among historians has long been that the people put on trial were innocent victims of a repressive society. Messer-Kruse believed that himself, until a question from a student caused him to look into the transcript of the trial. He came to the conclusion that the defendants were not innocent after all. Of course, when he wrote about his findings, he was blasted by leftist historians for having the nerve to challenge the prevailing (and politically useful) view....

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
1-18-13

Taylor Branch, Prize-Winning Historian, to Teach MOOC on Civil-Rights Era

The author and historian Taylor Branch spent nearly 25 years exploring and writing about the civil-rights era, and the result was a popular trilogy of books, America in the King Years, one of which won a Pulitzer Prize. This semester Mr. Branch will share his knowledge of the period by teaching a course at the University of Baltimore and opening it up to outsiders on the Web as a massive open online course, or MOOC.The course, which starts on January 23, is built around his new book, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, and will include face-to-face instruction with 20 University of Baltimore students, along with up to 100 auditors who will tune in online at no charge.The idea for the course took shape as Mr. Branch worked on the new book, a 190-page distillation of his earlier 2,300-page trilogy. Mr. Branch said teachers and professors had told him that their students enjoyed learning about the civil-rights era but that they found the three heavy volumes to be too cumbersome. He said this was even the case in a course he had taught on the subject....

Source: Sioux Falls Argus-Leader
1-29-13

Revival of literature -- including historical literature -- in South Dakota

...Jon Lauck, whose latest book, “The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History,” will come out this fall from University of Iowa Press, says it is an exciting time for writers in South Dakota.Since Lauck of Sioux Falls first started writing political history books more than a decade ago, he’s seen area authors make great strides in both getting published and making connections.“Everything seems to be converging,” says Lauck, who also works as an adviser to Sen. John Thune. “It used to be that if you wrote a good book about South Dakota, you had no place to go. There are more opportunities than ever.”...

Source: Popular Archaeology
12-1-12

Research team investigates demise of Neanderthals in Spain

La Roca dels Bous, a Paleolithic site located near the southeastern Pyrenees of Spain, has been cited by archaeologists as a key location with Neanderthal-related remains that may shed light on the changes that may have contributed to the demise of the Neanderthals in Europe. Now, a team led by Dr. Rafael Mora of the University Autonomous of Barcelona will be returning to the site in 2013 to excavate and explore lithic assemblages, fossil bone, and other remains that may date as far back as 50,000 BP. The excavations may help research efforts focused on constructing a better understanding of the factors that may have contributed to the decline and eventual disappearance of humanity's most closely related extinct human species.  

Source: AHA Today
1-15-13

Job Searches at the AHA Annual Meeting

Search committees conducted interviews for over 154 positions at the 2013 AHA annual meeting, almost matching last year’s total of 160. The number of searches slipped a bit, which is typical in smaller meeting cities.For the first time in recent memory, jobs with a European specialization outnumbered those for the United States, 25 to 24 percent. The next highest was Asia, followed by Latin America, and then thematic. These searches, which did not require a specific geographical area, were mostly for public and digital historians. Five percent or less of the searches asked for either African, Middle East, or world history specializations....

Source: AHA Today
1-23-13

Mellon Grant Meetings in New Orleans

In December, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association grants for broadening the career horizons of humanities PhDs. At its 2013 annual meeting in New Orleans, the AHA hosted the project’s initial conversations. Dozens of directors of graduate studies, university administrators, and contingent faculty members met with AHA past president Anthony Grafton, senior project advisor Robert Weisbuch, and project director Julia Brookins. They discussed the implications of what we already know—and do not know—about the careers of history doctorates who are not postsecondary teachers.Administrators from a range of universities focused on disciplinary definitions of “placement.” They described how placement statistics currently encourage history departments to discount or ignore PhD alumni embarking on careers outside the professoriate, however illustrious their paths might be. They shared examples of alternative approaches in disciplines like chemistry and engineering. Participants suggested that the AHA could lead the redefinition of a successful job placement for newly minted PhDs. They also discussed ways that they and their colleagues in administration could help to make placement incentives reflect more fully what historians value about their training and abilities....

Source: NYT
1-28-13

Stanley Karnow, Historian and Journalist, Dies at 87

Stanley Karnow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist who produced acclaimed books and television documentaries about Vietnam and the Philippines in the throes of war and upheaval, died on Sunday at his home in Potomac, Md. He was 87.The cause was congestive heart failure, said Mr. Karnow’s son, Michael.For more than three decades Mr. Karnow was a correspondent in Southeast Asia, working for Time, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, The Washington Post, NBC News, The New Republic, King Features Syndicate and the Public Broadcasting Service. But he was best known for his books and documentaries....

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
1-28-13

Nell Irvin Painter Bids Farewell to the Past

In 2005 the prize-winning historian Nell Irvin Painter put down her pen and picked up a paintbrush.After 17 years at Princeton University, the publication of seven groundbreaking books, and terms at the helms of two prestigious historical associations, Ms. Painter said goodbye to all that. She retired at 62 and spent $150,000 to pursue a bachelor-of-fine-arts degree from Rutgers University, followed by an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, in 2011.And although she received a Centennial Medal that same year from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for her historical work, the former professor, once described by some peers as an imperious trouble­maker who refused to be boxed in, is not particularly interested in returning to the ivory tower.In an interview here at her art studio, a few blocks from Penn Station, Ms. Painter, who is now 70, describes having given away all the books in her library. She says she'll never write another word of history....

Source: WickedLocal
1-24-13

Georgetown historian appraises pieces of JFK's life

Georgetown — The estate of David Powers Sr., the former special assistant of President John F. Kennedy, is up for auction and a Georgetown historian is right in the middle of it. McInnis Auctions Gallery in Amesbury will host a "Presidential Auction" at their gallery on Sunday, Feb. 17, selling off a massive collection of items from the Kennedy years.... Daniel Meader of Georgetown, the in-house historian for McInnis Auctions, has spent about five months sorting the massive collection and organizing it into lots. The auction house heard from David Powers, Jr., the son of the late David Powers, who was looking for an auction house to handle an enormous amount of historical Kennedy items....

Source: LA Review of Books
1-23-13

The China Blog: An Interview with Historian James H. Carter

Historian James H. Carter recently wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books on a new “biography” of the “The Books of Changes,” an important Chinese classical text.  Asia Editor Jeffrey Wasserstrom caught up with Carter to ask him a few questions about, naturally enough, China and biography.JW: You began your review of Richard Smith’s new “biography” of the Yi Jing (Book of Changes) with some ruminations on the whole notion of biographies that don’t focus on individuals.  If there were one other book with a tie to China you think especially worthy of a “biography,” what would it be - and who would you like to see writeJHC: It’s hard to eschew “actual” biographies - ones about people - because there are so many lives in China’s past that are so rich and resonant.  Zhang Xueliang, who began life as the son of China’s most powerful warlord, and saw his homeland overrun by Japanese troops after his own commanders ordered him not to resist, played a key role in kidnapping Chiang Kai-shek and forcing him to cooperate with the Communists before living for decades under house arrest in Taiwan (eventually dying - at age 100! - in Hawaii), seems a more than deserving subject.