Historians in the News

Penelope Niven, Carl Sandburg Biographer, Dies at 75

Ms. Niven’s groundbreaking books helped revive public interest in Carl Sandburg, Edward Steichen and Thornton Wilder.

Sean Wilentz wants to know why the American literary canon has admitted so few historians

by Sean Wilentz

Two mid-century scholars are finally getting their due

50 years teaching history at the same school and still going strong at age 77

When J. Murray Murdoch first began teaching at Cedarville University, Lyndon B. Johnson was president, gas was about $.30 a gallon and “The Sound of Music” made its premier.

Eric Hobsbawm is remembered as a polyglot of a kind that's vanished

"On display is a kind of intellect now so rare as to be endangered, if not extinct."

Ex-USC professor pleads guilty to sexually assaulting boys overseas

Williams taught anthropology, gender studies and history at USC for about two decades until he quit in 2011.

So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class . . .

If all goes well, the Big History Project will be introduced in hundreds of more classrooms by next year and hundreds, if not thousands, more the year after that.

Will boycotters of Israel shun scholars from institutions using federal funds? Martin Kramer wants answers.

by Martin Kramer

No university has more senior faculty boycotters signed on this letter than Columbia.

Michael Katz, 75, Who Challenged View of Poverty, Dies

Professor Katz wrote more than a dozen books chronicling public welfare policies in the United States from the start of the republic through the 20th century.

Second year in a row, job openings for historians down

This decline is especially disconcerting when we consider that the overall economy has been improving and the US jobless rate declining.

4 months late, UK’s Telegraph publishes an obituary for Gabriel Kolko

Gabriel Kolko was a Marxist historian who denounced America for imperialism but eventually accepted that socialism had failed.

Northwestern celebrates Garry Wills with a book in his honor

Nation and World, Church and God gathers original critical reflections by leading writers and scholars on Garry Wills’s life work.

A.J. Langguth dies at 81; foreign correspondent and historian of wars

Langguth spent seven years researching and writing "Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975" (2000), which won acclaim for telling the Vietnamese side of the story as well as it did the American side.

UCLA Economist, Known as Railroad Historian, Dies at 89

He was among the best and most prolific railroad and transportation historians of his generation.

Classicist Mary Beard celebrated by the New Yorker as “The Troll Slayer”

by Rebecca Mead

A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors.

AHA says Illinois should reinstate job offer to controversial pro-Palestinian English professor

Letter of Concern to University of Illinois Chancellor Regarding Salaita Case (2014)

Marcus Rediker says it was pirates, slaves, and motley crews who shaped the modern world, not the big heroes we hear so much about

Unsung heroes of the seas—how pirates, slaves, and motley crews shaped the modern world.

Pro-Israel website chides Middle East Studies professors, claiming they’re apologists for Hamas

"Reaction by Middle East studies professors to Israel's recent effort to destroy Hamas's terrorist infrastructure epitomizes their perennial pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-American biases."

OAH issues a statement in support of the AP standards

"The Organization of American Historians supports the Revised Framework for the Advanced Placement and U.S. History Course and Exam."

New website by the Center for History and New Media explores the history of child custody in Virginia

This freely available website explores child custody in Virginia and nationally within a broad historical and legal context with the goal of providing an impartial, interdisciplinary resource grounded in humanities scholarship.

David Rosand, an Art History Scholar Whose Heart Was in Venice, Dies at 75

He taught his first class at Columbia in 1964 and his last in 2013, with very few breaks in that run.