10 March 2016 – Eric Gonzaba
Every morning, we wake up and open our dressers or closets to find something to wear. If you’re anything like me, the selection is usually the first thing you grab as you wipe your heavy eyes and question whether it was worth staying up to watch an extra hour of Netflix the night before. Read More
09 March 2016 – Jason Allen
race, The Public Historian, TPH 38.1, "Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton" responses, art
The American narrative, like any cultural narrative, consists of stories that structure and assign meaning to the nation’s origin, history, and existence. In theory, this narrative can link Americans who have experienced genocide, slavery, and white privilege. But for people descended from enslaved peoples, this narrative has instead been used to conceal the inconvenient truths of systemic historic and current racial injustice and inequality. Read More
08 March 2016 – editors
From around the field this week: Truth and lies in Ontario; gravestones and cemetery monuments in Illinois; and a slew of new books and journals. Read More
07 March 2016 – Meghan Gelardi Holmes
My grandmother was well into her seventies by the time I was old enough to share in one of her favorite activities. We would meet at Penn Station and take the bus uptown to visit the newest show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read More
04 March 2016 – editors
Environmental Racism and Lead Poisoning in Flint
I study environmental justice movements, both contemporary and historical. Lead (along with asthma) has been a central urban environmental health issue in the US that hits racial minorities and working-class people particularly hard. Lead is often thought of, for that reason, as an example of environmental racism. Read More
02 March 2016 – Sharon Leon
TPH 38.1, "Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology" responses, public engagement, digital history, The Public Historian
Andrew Hurley’s article, “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology,” begins with the launch of the Virtual City Project in 1999 and brings us up to the present moment. In that span of time, Hurley and his colleagues at the University of Missouri-St. Read More
01 March 2016 – editors
From around the field this week: Public history posters in Bogotà, conference on slave dwellings in South Carolina, reflecting on collections in Manchester, U.K. and preserving/promoting them with National Endowment for the Humanities grants Read More
29 February 2016 – Adina Langer
theater, popular culture, methods, public engagement, memory, museums, oral history, music, exhibitions
My recent review of the Georgia Social Studies Standards, as part of my work at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education, galvanized my desire to reflect on the importance of the Broadway musical, Allegiance, which tells the story in fictionalized form of George Takei’s family’s experience in internment camps during World War II. Read More
26 February 2016 – Kristen Treen
Unlike the Confederate flag, photographs enable the viewer to look the past in the eyes with a degree of sympathy, to interpret gesture, emotional expression, and the suggestive personal proffering of military possessions through a medium with which we now express ourselves on a daily basis. Read More
24 February 2016 – Ellen Noonan 1
race, The Public Historian, TPH 38.1, "Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton" responses, memory
Lyra Monteiro is certainly right, when she notes in her review of Hamilton: An American Musical, that mainstream American culture has a lamentable tendency to embrace and retell certain stories about American history, including that of the founders, with greater frequency and enthusiasm than the many other stories that require more difficult reckonings with the past. Read More