Historians in the News

Washington History Seminar – Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Professor Kate Masur joins the Washington History Seminar on Monday, April 19 to discuss "Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction."

Washington History Seminar – Stalin: Passage to Revolution, Monday, April 12

Ronald Grigor Suny of the University of Michigan joins the Washington History Seminar on Monday, April 12 to discuss "Stalin: Passage to Revolution" at 

The Health Care Crucible (Review)

Gabriel Winant's "The Next Shift" examines the shift from industrial manufacturing toward care work as the economic base of the Rust Belt, where profit comes from treating the old, sick, and poor of one generation of the working class through the labor of the next generation.

Black Soldiers and the Civil War

by Aston Gonzalez

Deborah Willis's book "The Black Civil War Soldier" utilizes visual imagery other historians have often passed over to describe how Black soldiers understood military service in relation to their hopes for future economic, political, and familial security. 

2021 Winners of the Guggenheim Fellowship are Announced

Historians are prominently represented among the just-announced winners of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships for 2021.

AHA Issues Letter Regarding Proposed Termination of Tenured Faculty Members at Salem State University (April 2021)

The AHA urges Salem State (MA) University to reconsider an announced plan to terminate four tenured faculty positions in its history department in a public letter addressed to President John Keenan and Provost David Silva.

Devoted to the Deaf, Did Alexander Graham Bell Do More Harm Than Good?

Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone was, a new biographer argues, an adjunct to his passion for "oralism," a movement to encourage deaf people to speak and to reject sign language, a commitment that appears oppressive and intolerant from the perspective of the modern disability movement. 

Retro Report Presents: How an Abstinence Pledge in the ’90s Shamed a Generation of Evangelicals

Retro Report's latest collaboration with the New York Times examines the roots and social impact of Evangelical purity culture, both for individuals and American society's approach to sexuality. 

Can Joe Biden Replicate FDR’s Success in Rebuilding the Democrats’ Coalition?

Eric Rauchway's latest book on the FDR era shows that the New Deal was a complex undertaking, administered often through local channels, which meant it sometimes enabled democracy and sometimes suppressed it. The Biden administration can win allegiance from voters by expanding the safety net and strategic spending, but it won't be simple. 

‘This is Environmental Racism’: How a Protest in a North Carolina Farming Town Sparked a National Movement

After decades of struggle with little access to resources or power, activists in the environmental justice movement have placed racial equity at the center of the President's environmental agenda.   

'This is still being suppressed': OU professor's book of recovered photos preserves history of Tulsa Race Massacre

by Ari Fife

Oklahoma University historian Karlos Hill has published a photographic history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, working to bridge images often created by hostile whites to the experiences of Black survivors. 

Methods of Power: How do Authoritarians Rule? (Review)

by David A. Bell

Is Trumpism a fascist movement or a response to a power vacuum created by decades of neoliberal policies? Historian David A. Bell reviews Ruth Ben-Ghiat's "Strongmen" and argues that the book misses the specific context of Trumpism by making him an archetype of the authoritarian ruler. 

The Age of Care (Review of Gabriel Winant's "The Next Shift")

by Nelson Lichtenstein

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein says Gabriel Winant's book on the rise of the care industry is the story of community change in the last 50 years, with union retiree health care dollars reabsorbed by capital through the treatment of diseases of despair provoked by deindustrialization (with care provided by a workforce of women and people of color).

Remembering is Resistance

by Jessica M. Parr

Books by Ana Lucia Araujo and Joan Wallach Scott examine the politics of memory and history and explain the stakes of fights over teaching and memorializing oppression. 

America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

by Caitlin Dickerson

Historian David Romo says that racist nativism is "ingrained in the culture and in the laws that are produced by that culture," but concealed by myths of a nation welcoming to immigrants. Also cited: Rose Cuison-Villazor, Daniel Tichenor, Mae Ngai, Donna Gabaccia and Adam Goodman. 

How a Chicago Teacher Sparked a 'Memory War,' Forcing Lithuania to Confront its Nazi Past

Siliva Foti's family history project became a book that challeged Lithuania's official narrative about its role in the Holocaust, and exposed her grandfather's active role in the extermination of thousands of Lithuanian Jews. 

Can America’s Problems Be Fixed By a President Who Loves Jon Meacham?

The popular historian and biographer Jon Meacham has been a major influence on Joe Biden's political outlook, and potentially on his policy agenda. Does a view of history informed by conflicts of virtue and values offer a path to fixing corrupted or hollowed-out institutions? Are academic historians jealous? 

A Black WWII Veteran Was Beaten and Blinded, Fueling Civil Rights Movement

A new documentary examines the attack on Isaac Woodward in 1946, which catalyzed demands for full citizenship and civil rights. 

What a Unionization Effort in Alabama Could Mean for the Labor Movement

Historian Keri Leigh Merritt discusses the Amazon unionization vote in the context of southern labor history.

The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap — A Review Of To Live And Defy In LA

by Katherine Rye Jewell

A review by historian Katherine Rye Jewell of Felicia Angeja Viator's new book on the rise of "gangsta" rap music in the context of racism, poverty and policing in South Los Angeles in the 1980s.