Historians in the News

UMKC professor applauds Shakespeare film ‘Anonymous’

Felicia Hardison Londre, a respected theater historian on the faculty of the UMKC theater department, was eager to see director Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” and not just because it delves into the world of Elizabethan actors and playwrights.She was excited to see the movie because Emmerich and screenwriter John Orloff embrace a theory about the authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays and poetry that has been subject to disdain and outright mockery by traditionalists for decades: that the true writer was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. That’s what Londre, a proud Oxfordian, thinks.The idea articulated by the film is that Oxford wrote the tragedies, comedies, history plays, sonnets and narrative poems attributed to Shakespeare but, because of his social station, could not attach his name to his literary works....

Nixon tapes result of work by Madison professor

MADISON, Wis.—It's Richard Nixon unplugged. Newly-released documents and recordings of the former president are the result of years of work by University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor Stanley Kutler.His successful court challenge is responsible for the release of the secret records and documents, including a transcript of Nixon's grand jury testimony related to the Watergate investigation. The National Archives and its Nixon Presidential Library released the testimony Thursday, which afforded a rare look inside grand jury proceedings....

Second expert trashes O’Reilly’s Lincoln book

On Friday I wrote about the decision of Ford’s Theatre not to offer Bill O’Reilly’s bestsetlling new book on the Lincoln assassination at its bookstore because an expert National Park Service reviewer found the work to be riddled with factual errors.Now, in a review in a leading Civil War magazine, a second expert has flunked O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln,” calling it “somewhere between an authoritative account and strange fiction.”The review (which is not online) appears in the November issue of North & South, the official magazine of the Civil War Society.“The narrative contains numerous errors of people, place, and events,” writes reviewer Edward Steers Jr., author of more than five books on the Lincoln assassination. He goes on to list about 10 errors of fact in “Killing Lincoln,” which O’Reilly co-authored with Martin Dugard and which has been atop bestseller lists for weeks....

China's rise means resource-rich Canada should beware, historian Niall Ferguson says

OTTAWA — China will attempt to drive an economic and political wedge between Canada and the United States as it moves for a greater stake in this country's natural resources, celebrity historian and author Niall Ferguson said Friday."It wouldn't be China if it wasn't looking for a chance to detach Canada from its big southern neighbour and to exploit the resentment many Canadians feel about the United States," said Ferguson."There will be more friction between China and the U.S. in the next 10 or 15 years and Canada will find itself in the middle if that becomes a rather fraught relationship," he added."Imagine if either the United States or China said to Canada, 'You have to choose.'"...Canada and other western nations should consider China a "threatening state," he said."Look behind the facade," he said. "It looks westernized — you see Kentucky Fried Chicken signs practically the moment you get off the plane. It looks a lot like they're westernized — more than Japan actually — but behind the facade is a one-party state where the power of the state is pretty much sacrosanct and individual freedom is circumscribed in a way we would find intolerable"...

Military historian uncovers Canadian recipients of U.S. Medal of Honor

They might not have been Canada’s fights but some of the Canadians who chose to take up arms became some of the most distinguished soldiers on the battlefield.Of the 10,312 soldiers buried in the U.S. Civil War cemetery at Marietta, Georgia, only two received the highest American award for bravery in the face of the enemy. One of the men to receive the Medal of Honor was Denis Buckley, a Canadian.Buried under the wrong name for 140 years, Buckley is one of 104 known Canadians who have earned the medal. Bart Armstrong, a Saanich resident and the only Canadian member of the Medal of Honor Society, was instrumental in uncovering Buckley’s story and that of some 50 other Canadians who were awarded the highest honour in the U.S. military.For the second year in a row, the 62-year-old Armstrong is hosting an information booth at the Royal B.C. Museum to educate visitors on the Canadian recipients of the medal....

Ranking History’s Atrocities by Counting the Corpses

Browsing the bookstore shelves can pose its grim challenges for the ordinary mortal. The reproachful cover of “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” is bad enough. There’s also “100 Birds to See Before You Die,” “100 Belgian Beers to Try Before You Die!” and “1,001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.” Make your way through “50 Places to Play Golf Before You Die” and you’re still not done: “50 More Places to Play Golf Before You Die” is staring right at you.nto this profusion of lists comes Matthew White, a self-described “atrocitologist” and numbers freak from Richmond, Va., who has compiled yet another — more sobering — roll call to ponder. With its stylishly lurid graphics and goofy asides, “The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities” may seem more like an aspiring classic of macabre bathroom reading than a serious effort. But Mr. White’s book, published this week by W. W. Norton, arrives trailing some impressive scholarly affirmation, including a ringing foreword from the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker....

Stanley Kutler’s work gives a glimpse of Nixon “unplugged”

Historians and political junkies soon will have more Richard Nixon material to kick around, thanks to a UW–Madison professor emeritus who has fought for years to get the secret records of the former president made public.Stanley Kutler, the emeritus professor of law and history whose successful court challenge is responsible for their release, says the records will be a chance to hear Nixon minus his lawyers, handlers and “spinmeisters.”“This is a chance to hear Richard Nixon unplugged, if you will,” says Kutler, nationally recognized as a top expert on the Nixon administration and the Watergate era.The National Archives and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Thursday, Nov. 10 will release the recordings and documents, including a transcript of Nixon’s grand jury testimony related to the Watergate investigation....

Historian kept 29 dolled-up mummies at home, police say

Russian police said Monday that a historian arrested last week for desecrating several Nizhny Novgorod cemeteries had kept 29 female mummies at home and dressed them up like dolls.The 45-year-old local resident was detained last week and accused of digging up dead bodies at the local cemeteries over the past two years.A search of his apartment came up with 29 self-made dolls made of mummified human remains and dressed up in clothes of the buried women. Police said that several plaques from gravestones, maps of local cemeteries and doll-making manuals had been retrieved during the search. Forensic experts matched the man’s fingerprints and footprints with the ones lifted from disturbed graves at the Nizhny Novgorod cemeteries....

Russia: Mummified Bodies Found At Historian's Home

MOSCOW — The Russian historian had always been open about his interest in the dead and eagerly described how he loved to rummage through cemeteries, studying grave stones to uncover the life stories behind them.What he failed to mention, according to police, was that he had dug up 29 bodies and taken them back to his apartment, where he dressed them in women's clothes scavenged from graves and then put them on display.A police video of the man's apartment in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod released Monday shows his macabre collection of what look like dolls. Lifesize, they are dressed in bright dresses and headscarves, their hands and faces wrapped in what appears to be cloth. Police said they were mummified remains....

Historians remember Battle of Tippecanoe on 200th anniversary

The field where the Battle of Tippecanoe took place looked eerily similar to how it did 200 years ago, right before the fight began.This weekend marked the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Tippecanoe County Historical Association organized a three-day event to remember both sides of the conflict, with events in two locations.In Battle Ground, Ind., basic tents were scattered on the wooded ground while hundreds of men dressed as camping soldiers. These men created a living history of the scene before the famous battle that started the War of 1812. Visitors got to tour the battlefield and see military demonstrations by the reenactors.A few miles away, Prophetstown, Ind., looked like a Native American village, hosting wigwams, trading posts and dance ceremonies, along with an archeological history of the area. This site was representative of the Native American men who fought in the Battle of Tippecanoe....

Communism appeals to public in crisis, Czech historians say

Prague, Nov 5 (CTK) - Communism is still a significant phenomenon and people may tend to see hope in it mainly in the times of a crisis, Jiri Kocian, deputy head of the Czech Science Academy's Institute of Contemporary History, told CTK at the end of a three-day conference on communism Saturday.The conference held in Prague focused on the 90-year history of Czech and Slovak communism.Many people are remembering the totalitarian regime as the period of social certainties, Kocian said.He stressed that new knowledge on communism must become a part of school textbooks and the threat of communism as the period of repressions and persecution must be constantly reminded.

Feds may be creating re-enactor hired guns, historian says

Is Ottawa creating squadrons of rent-a-regiment re-enactors by flooding Ontario and Quebec with funds for its War of 1812 bicentennial bash?That's what historian Gordon Terry fears.Federal funds are flowing to support more than 100 historical events in towns scattered throughout the two provinces - and Terry cautions the municipalities may have to sweeten the pot to entice overworked volunteer re-enactors to over to their camps."What is not realized is it is a finite resource," he said, cautioning an influx of government cash could create a fiercely competitive market environment."It's the same money but it competes with itself to buy, to outbid participation."...

Norwich historian has designs on Malta’s academic history

For PhD and Masters degree students at The University of Malta will, from now on, be graduating in ceremonial robes and hoods designed by Nick Groves, 55, from Rouen Road, Norwich.The university held a competition for robe designers and former UEA post graduate Dr Groves – a founding fellow of The Burgon Society, which celebrates the history of university ceremonial dress – won with his designs inspired by traditional continental gowns....

Historian says Georgia events 'influenced, changed world'

Imagine a world where the South won the Civil War, where slavery continued into the 20th century, and the Nazis emerged victorious from World War II.That's the kind of world Dr. Jamil S. Zainaldin said probably would have resulted if not for a few key events in Georgia history."I think that we who live in Georgia do not really appreciate the extent of how significant Georgia is to American history and even to world history," Zainaldin told members of the Newnan Carnegie Library Foundation at their Wednesday lunch meeting at the Carnegie building.Georgia has "influenced and changed the world," he said. He shared with the board members five events in Georgia history that he said are especially significant."Number one is the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney," he said. That event in 1793 changed not just the future plantation period history of the South, but also led to the industrialization of the North, he said....

Historians fight plans to turn bloody WWI battlefield into housing development

They fought the enemy underground in a warren of tunnels as one of the bloodiest battles of World War I raged above them.At about 3pm on December 19, 1915, the group of five miners working 80ft below no-man’s land near La Boisselle on the Western Front became the battle’s latest victims.Now, as Remembrance Day approaches, a group of historians are calling for the site to be preserved as a memorial to the fallen men – in the face of pressure to develop it for housing.Among the men killed that fateful day was William Arthur Lloyd, a 37-year-old bar manager, from Wrexham, who was entombed with his colleagues in the tunnel when 28,000kg of explosives blasted them into oblivion.The Germans had been digging their own tunnels – often the opposing sides came so close they could hear each other working – and had detonated their charge before the British miners.Historian Simon Jones, of the La Boisselle Study Group, says many other French battlefields along the Western Front have been re-developed, but local landowners the Lejeune family are determined to preserve this site....

Native American Scholar, Cahuilla Historian Katherine Siva Saubel Was 91

Katherine Siva Saubel, a Native American scholar, Cahuilla historian, co-founder of the Malki Museum, and one California's most respected tribal elders, died Tuesday at her home on the Morongo Indian Reservation, her nephew and caregiver said Wednesday."It is windy today, because the wind is looking for her," Kevin Siva, a lifelong resident of the Morongo Reservation, said in a phone interview. "She always told me stories about the wind when I was younger."Saubel died Tuesday at home in bed, "very peacefully," said Siva, who has been his aunt's caregiver for the past 15 years.Saubel was born in March 1920 in her village Pachaval in northern San Diego County, Siva said....

Historians campaign for Library and Archives Canada

Government cuts are hindering Library and Archives Canada’s ability to preserve items important to Canada’s heritage, according to some academics and historians.The Canadian Association of University Teachers launched a campaign to save Library and Archives Canada and is calling on the federal government to fund a protection project.Jim Turk, executive director of the association said the federal archives have been cut by 35 per cent since the 1990s, most of the cuts being to acquisitions and staff....

Should Julio Pino still be teaching at Kent State?

by Steven Plaut

This past week Kent State gained a new basis for international notoriety, this time of academic standards and decency.  

More Options for History Ph.D.s

Last month, the president and executive director of the American Historical Association issued a call for their discipline to move away from the idea that Ph.D. training is primarily about producing the next generation of professors. They called for history departments to stop talking about non-academic careers as "alternative," and to instead see them as truly equal options -- and as options that should help shape the nature of doctoral education.Their call was called "No More Plan B," as a counter to the idea that academic careers are necessarily Plan A. Today they are releasing a follow-up -- "Plan C" --  in which they provide more specific ideas about the kinds of changes history departments might consider for their Ph.D. programs.Here are some of the ideas shared in the new piece by Anthony Grafton, a Princeton University historian who is president of the AHA, and James Grossman, executive director of the association:

Debate over a history professor who shouted an anti-Israel slogan

A professor at Kent State University last week set off a debate over appropriate and inappropriate ways to express views when he shouted "death to Israel" during the question period of a lecture by an Israeli diplomat.The professor's remarks are being condemned by some -- including Kent State's president -- as inappropriate. But others say that he engaged in a legitimate expression of his political views.The shout came from Julio Pino (seen at left), an associate professor of history. The speaker at whom Pino shouted was Ishmael Khaldi, formerly the deputy consul general at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. Khaldi, as a Bedouin and Muslim, lectures on his experiences as an advocate for Israel.According to multiple press accounts, Pino posed a question to Khaldi after his talk, and then shouted "death to Israel" and left the auditorium. It is the latter statement that has set off the controversy.