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: AP
Apr 16, 2008
Historian Robert Caro, humorist Calvin Trillin and poet Paul Muldoon will be among the eight new members inducted next month into the elite American Academy of Arts and Letters, the academy announced Tuesday.
Caro, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for his biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker," and for his multivolume series on Lyndon Johnson. Trillin is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker who writes often about food and last year released a best-se
Source: Tom Eblen in the Lexington Herald-Leader
Apr 16, 2008
I always think of Thomas D. Clark in the spring.
Perhaps it's because, soon after I returned to Lexington in the spring of 1998, I asked Kentucky's historian laureate to speak to the Herald-Leader staff. He stood and lectured for nearly an hour without notes, putting Kentucky's array of issues, controversies and quirks into the context of history's great sweep.
It was an impressive performance, especially for a man about to turn 95.
While cleaning out files
Source: Efraim Karsh at the website of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (Spring 2008)
Apr 16, 2008
[Efraim Karsh is professor and head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London and an author, most recently, of Islamic Imperialism: A History. He is a member of the SPME Board of Direcors.]
Since Israel's founding in 1948, there have been two Arab-Israeli conflicts. The first one is military in nature. Played out on the battlefield, it has heroes, villains, martyrs, and victims. The second conflict, less bloody but no less incendiary, is the battle over the historical culpab
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Apr 16, 2008
Last week, while rushing to finish up a review of Francois Cusset’s French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (University of Minnesota Press), I heard that Stanley Fish had just published a column about the book for The New York Times. Of course the only sensible thing to do was to ignore this development entirely. The last thing you need when coming to the end of a piece of work is to go off and do some more reading. The inne
Source: HNN Staff
Apr 16, 2008
The National Council on Public History held its Annual Meeting in Louisville, KY, April 10-13, 2008. Click on the SOURCE link above to read blog comments.
Source: John Leo in the WSJ
Apr 15, 2008
In 1994, Home Box Office and Pepsico celebrated Black History Month by producing a poster that was intended to show black achievement: It featured a large picture of the pyramids and many smaller images, including one of the Sphinx. Worse, the companies sent 20,000 copies of the poster to predominantly black schools. Honest teachers in those schools had to explain why a corporate seal of approval had been given to a historical claim that just isn't true.
This "celebration
Source: New Yorker abstract
Apr 14, 2008
Writer discusses Abu El-Haj’s doctoral dissertation, which was revised and published in 2001 under the title “Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.” The book looked at the role of archeology in what was essentially a political project: the Biblical validation for Jewish claims to what is now Israel. After teaching at the University of Chicago and spending a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Abu El-Haj moved to New Yo
Source: http://abclocal.go.com
Apr 14, 2008
Dr. John Hope Franklin endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama, citing his unique ability to inspire and bring people of all ages, backgrounds and party affiliations together.
"Senator Obama is a truly exceptional leader who understands the struggles of people from all walks of life. As president, he will be the voice of regular people - something that has been missing from the political landscape for so many years. He has shown an ability to bridge the divides in our society and unite
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
Apr 14, 2008
We hope members—and everyone in the profession with an interest in the future of our disciplinary society—will take a little time to read the report of the Working Group on the Future of the AHA, which can be found in both the print and online versions of the April issue of Perspectives
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Apr 14, 2008
Last year, John Kelsay went to Oman to talk about war. The first night there, speaking at the Grand Mosque in Muscat, he faced a large audience of students studying religion. Discussing the attacks of September 11, 2001, Kelsay argued that the perpetrators had violated the noble tradition of jihad, which is based on legal judgments about the ethics of armed struggle that stretch back to Islam's formative years. Calling on his listeners to challenge the self-styled "jihadis" who claimed
Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca
Apr 13, 2008
History, proverbially, is written by the winning side. This has certainly been the case for 19th-century India, argues William Dalrymple, an author of history and travel books who lives in New Delhi and London.
Dalrymple’s latest book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, examines the downfall of the capital and imperial court of northern India’s Mughal Empire.
The author draws extensively on contemporary documentation, originally written in the court’s
Source: Jacob Heilbrunn in a review in the NYT BOok Review of Philip Shenon's The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
Apr 13, 2008
... A talented historian who wrote a book with Rice, [9/11 Commission executive director Philip] Zelikow came to be loathed by much of the commission’s staff for his arrogance. Some staff members and more than a few people in the Washington press corps even viewed him as a White House mole, intent on sanitizing the Bush administration’s record. According to Shenon, Zelikow did not inform the leaders of the commission of his role in drafting the White House’s September 2002 “pre-emptive defense”
Source: NYT
Apr 13, 2008
When Stanley J. Seeger gave Princeton $2 million for Hellenic studies nearly three decades ago, the gift’s income paid for two courses in modern Greek and trips to Greece for five.
But the Seeger money, which must be spent only on matters Greek, is now worth $33 million, multiplying through aggressive investing like the rest of Princeton’s endowment. So the university offers Greek, Greek and more Greek — 13 courses this semester, including “The Image of Greece in European Cinema” an
Source: AP
Apr 12, 2008
The University of Richmond has inaugurated its ninth president in the school's 176-year history.
Edward L. Ayers, a noted historian of the American South, recounted on Friday the university's history before outlining his goals for the school, which included a renewed focus on diversity, affordability, and improving its relationship with the city.
The former dean at the University of Virginia, who took the president's job on July 1, won a Bancroft Prize in 2004 for his b
Source: http://www.dailyamerican.com
Apr 11, 2008
A local educator’s work to preserve area history is receiving national attention.
Paul Newman, a University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown professor and social historian, has been named the History Channel’s “Save Our History Teacher of the Year” for his work in history preservation.
“I am both humbled and honored to get it,” Newman said.
As a historian, Newman said he is interested in those who were not making headlines in history.
“I look for the aver
Source: Press Release--ASMEA
Apr 10, 2008
Washington, DC—Leading scholars of Middle East studies and African studies are set to gather in the nation's capital for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa's (ASMEA) annual conference later this month where they will be joined by the preeminent authority in Middle East studies, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University.
Hailed as "the world's foremost Islamic scholar" (Wall Street Journal) and as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies"
Source: Janet Maslin in the NYT
Apr 10, 2008
In “Slavery by Another Name” Douglas A. Blackmon eviscerates one of our schoolchildren’s most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War. Mr. Blackmon unearths shocking evidence that the practice persisted well into the 20th century. And he is not simply referring to the virtual bondage of black sharecroppers unable to extricate themselves economically from farming.
He describes free men and women forced into industrial servitude, bound by chains, faced with
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Apr 10, 2008
The history of American higher education since 1940 is full of dramatic changes — the growth of the modern scientific enterprise, desegregation, the impact of the GI bill, the campus unrest of the 60s, and so forth. Wilson Smith and Thomas Bender set out to tell that story with documents — from both establishment figures and their critics — in American Higher Education Transformed, 1940-2005, just published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. The book is a sequel to earlier work by Smith and
Source: Press Release--UC Davis
Apr 9, 2008
Susan Mann, a renowned historian of China, has been named the 2008 Faculty Research Lecturer by her colleagues at the University of California, Davis.
"Susan Mann is internationally known for her pioneering work on the history of women in China," history professor Alan Taylor said in announcing the 66th annual award last month at the spring meeting of the UC Davis Academic Senate. "... She revolutionized the study of Chinese history."
Source: The Age (Australia)
Apr 9, 2008
GREG Dening, one of Australia's leading ethnographic historians and author of several well-received books, has died from a stroke at Royal Hobart Hospital while on holiday in Tasmania. He was 76.
Acknowledged by his peers as one of the most imaginative, original and reflective minds working in the fields of history and historiography, Dening was appointed to the Max Crawford professorship of history at Melbourne University in 1971, and retired from there in 1990.
He was
