Historians in the News

Born a slave, John Hunter lived to be 112. Then NC historian Ernest Dollar found his family.

With luck and the internet, City of Raleigh Museum Director Ernest Dollar rescued him from wills buried in the state archive, articles printed in newspapers that no longer exist and a single line from the 1870 census.

Philanderers, Predators and Pickup Artists: A History

A review of SEDUCTION: A History From the Enlightenment to the Present by Clement Knox.

Black Perspectives Hosts Online Forum on HBO’s Watchmen This Week

by Ahmad Greene-Hayes

The forum will offer pieces from scholars in African American religious studies who think critically about the show and its engagement with politics, performance, and African American religions in the early twentieth-century South, specifically in Tulsa, after the 1921 massacre.

Henry Lewis Gates argues increased economic prosperity for blacks led to racial backlash that empowered Trump

"Between Martin Luther King's death and now, the black middle class has doubled and the black upper-middle class has quadrupled," Gates said in a New York Times interview published Tuesday.

Historians Nathan Connolly and Beryl Satter Interviewed On Housing Discrimination in the Jim Crow US and The Case for Reparations

Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and Beryl Satter is Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Karin Wulf Interviews Alexis Coe About Her Cheeky New George Washington Biography

by Karin Wulf

Alexis Coe’s cheeky biography of the first president pulls no punches

It’s been worse: Doris Kearns Goodwin reflects on America’s tumultuous past

“As difficult as the situation is today, we have lived through far more troubled times before."

Mary Jo Binker on Eleanor Roosevelt and Advice for Future Historians

by Isabella DelPino

“You know what I love about Eleanor Roosevelt and the thing that I try to emulate the most about Eleanor Roosevelt? She had tremendous zest for life and for new experience and that animates me.”

The challenge of teaching black history: sifting truth, myth, bias

Featuring Morehouse College history professor Frederick Knight. 

Historians Struggle to Understand Oral History Written in Forgotten Shorthand

The 1951 transcription is written in a decades-old shorthand style that few people use today. “It’s definitely a lost art,” Langsdon said.

World Socialist Web Site Publishes A reply to the American Historical Review’s defense of the 1619 Project

by David North and Tom Mackaman

"The fact that the 1619 Project is now being editorially defended in the AHR, despite the withering criticisms of highly respected professional historians, is a very troubling development," its authors claim. 

UNC Historian Cecelia Moore delves into true history of “Silent Sam” in court brief

This week UNC alumni and donors — and a prominent former university historian — filed briefs in the case insisting the the university will have to face the historical facts and answer those complicated questions if it intends to give the “Silent Sam” monument to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Nazis' Sobibor Death Camp Photos May Feature John Demjanjuk, Historians Say

Historians have presented a collection of photos kept by the deputy commander of the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp that they say appears to include images of John Demjanjuk, the retired Ohio auto worker who was tried in Germany for his alleged time as a Sobibor guard.

3D Technologies for Accessibility in Museums

by Carolyn Dillian and Katie Stringer Clary

We wanted to create an exhibit that was tactile, using 3D technologies, because almost everyone wants to touch when they go in the museum.

Amanda Seligman: Growing Into Teaching Career Diversity for Historians

by Amanda Seligman

Teaching Career Diversity undid my ancient assumption that a PhD in the humanities should lead to a professorship. 

Historian James T. Kloppenberg Writes Article About Teaching Pete Buttigieg

"Reading Buttigieg: A former teacher’s perspective"

He Wrote the Book on Boomers, and He Thinks the Gen Z Rap Against Them Isn’t Quite OK

“The Greater Generation” was a conscious retort to decades of boomer bashing. “Hating boomers,” Steinhorn recalls, “had become the last acceptable prejudice.

The Future of the Academy at the Association of American Colleges and Universities

At the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, academics discussed how to rethink the academy and how to separate it from the university. Features quotes from Johann Neem, chair of the history department at Western Washington University.

A Civil War-era ‘witch bottle’ may have been found on a Virginia highway, archaeologists say

Witch bottles can be traced to the East Anglia region of England in the late Middle Ages.

What Happens When You Give Students Control of the Syllabus?

Featuring Leslie Lindenauer, a history professor at Western Connecticut State University.