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: NPR
11/30/2020
Abbas Milani of Stanford University discusses the US-Iran relationship and the shocking assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist last week.
Source: New York Times
11/30/2020
The National Archives of American Art has been moving aggressively to document artists' responses to the concurrent social traumas of 2020, including the pandemic, police violence and protests, and a tumultuous election campaign.
Source: Irish Times
11/30/2020
“The British abandoned people to starvation,” says Prof Kevin Whelan of the University of Notre Dame. “At the highest level of government there was a sense that this ultimately wasn’t their problem”. A new Irish television documentary is narrated by Liam Neeson.
Source: Independent
11/19/2020
A new memorial recognizes the relationship of pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read and secures their place in the history of piracy.
Source: New York Review of Books
11/19/2020
by Greil Marcus
The music writer looks at three recent books on the Mississippi blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson, looking to pull his story out of the realm of myth.
Source: CNN
11/18/2020
While pro-Beijing lawmakers stress the need to promote national unity through civics education, educators, historians and parents in Hong Kong expect censorship and indoctrination under new restrictions.
Source: The Nation
11/17/2020
Three new books describe the role of administrator Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration in filtering the photographic work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee to emphasize the depression's burden on rural whites.
Source: New York Times
11/19/2020
An ambitious project seeks to make museums a more immersive experience by using big data to mine primary sources for references to scent and use chemistry and perfumerie to recreate the mix of odors characteristic of a time and place.
Source: Smithsonian
11/17/2020
The incoming director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture has published an anthology of Black American poetry that speaks to the ways that the arts and poets in particular have articulated and spread the cause of liberation.
Source: New York Times
11/16/2020
by Kerri Greenidge
A professor of African diaspora studies reviews two recent books about the antebellum period as part of a scholarly trend to recognize not only that slaves worked to achieve their own freedom but that the acts of fugitive slaves shaped the path to war, emancipation and abolition.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
11/17/2020
Campus Reform seeks to "stoke outrage at ‘liberal’ professors, with the political intent of creating a viral sensation that circulates through a highly partisan right-wing media ecosystem, and into the broader public discussion,” says Isaac Camola, a political science professor who has been active in organizing professors who are targeted by outrage campaigns.
Source: American Historical Association
11/19/2020
The AHA's virtual meeting will include a workshop for virtual history assignments and assessments; applicants can receive in-depth feedback on design and execution.
Source: Rolling Stone
11/19/2020
by Paul Solotaroff
Historian Simon Balto is among experts who place the Chicago Police Department's treatment of the city's Black communities in historical perspective.
Source: New York Times
11/18/2020
“There was an event that happened in 1621,” Wampanoag historian Linda Coombs said. “But the whole story about what occurred on that first Thanksgiving was a myth created to make white people feel comfortable.” Native activists hope to disrupt the stories of Thanksgiving by questioning public history and by recovering indigenous food practices.
Source: Atlas Obscura
11/17/2020
Chefs and historians of food cultures are working to build public understanding of the history of immigration and the African diaspora through knowledge of cooking and eating practices.
Source: Irish Times
11/16/2020
A documentary on a 1920 massacre of Irish sporting spectators in retaliation for the killing of British intelligence officers suffers from having too many talking heads in too short a running time, says a reviewer.
Source: Voice of America
11/17/2020
German historians have faced lawsuits for writing about World War II-era crimes by the Wehrmacht, part of a growing culture war in which right-wing Germans seek to deny or diminish the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes.
Source: New York Historical Society
11/18/2020
The New York Historical Society reminds potential candidates that the deadline for most of its fellowships for the 2021-22 academic year is January 15.
Source: Jerusalem Post
11/15/2020
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is among the academics criticizing the appointment of a right-wing politician to head the Israeli Holocaust memorial and educational center, arguing that his remarks toward Palestinians and Arab Israelis are disqualifying.
Source: Wall Street Journal
11/12/2020
If the new Showtime documentary wishes to undermine the legacy of Ronald Reagan, one reviewer suggests it ultimately makes the 40th President more sympathetic and appealing.
