Historians in the News

We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy

by Sarah Zhang

“We’ve gotten so good at preventing so many diseases, there’s been a loss of knowledge and a loss of experience,” Jeanne Kisacky, the author of Rise of the Modern Hospital, says.

The Future Of Confederate Monuments

by Kim O'Connell

“The Park Service needs to ask, ‘Who’s coming to your site and who’s not coming to your site?’” says Denise Meringolo, a professor of public history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Those monuments are a barrier to significant portions of the audience, for whom they are not simply inaccurate or annoying. They are traumatizing.”

As A New Blue Is Discovered, ASU Professor Details History Of The Color Blue

Arizona State's Theresa Devine discusses the discovery of a new blue pigment and the social significance of blue coloring from the ancient world to today. 

Black Broadway in DC: A New Book Explores the Undeniable Influence of U Street’s History

Briana Thomas's "Black Broadway in Washington, DC" examines the city's U Street, which was not just a daily fixture of Black life in the District, but a connector of Black America's aspirations in politics, education and business. 

Pankaj Mishra’s Reckoning With Liberalism’s Bloody Past

Indian critic Pankaj Mishra argues in a new book of essays that recent liberal concern about right-wing politicians declaring support for "western civilization" ignores the way that liberal colonialists have embraced ideas of cultural supremacy. 

Black Women Have Written History for over a Century

Pero Gaglo Dagbovie examines the work of Black women scholar-activists like Anna Julia Cooper whose work integrated the writing of African American history with political organizing, despite exclusion from the academy.

Black Women's Roles in the Civil Rights Movement have been Understated -- But that's Changing

Beverly Guy-Sheftall of Spelman College discusses the public minimization of women as leaders in the 1950s and 1960s Black Freedom movements. 

The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret

The value hierarchy of properties on the Monopoly game board reflect the history of Atlantic City; the game was created as the Great Migration brought African Americans north to New Jersey and spurred northern cities and their white residents to create and defend residential segregation. 

The Current Republic of Suffering

by Murray Browne

Drew Gilpin Faust's "This Republic of Suffering" inspires reflection on how the collective experiences of COVID and the loss of a half million Americans may shape the society that emerges. 

As American as Child Separation

by Rachel Nolan

Laura Briggs's new book on child separation policies links the treatment of contemporary migrants to other historical cases including Native American boarding schools and the sale of enslaved children, showing that the assertion of control over children and families has been a core component of racial nationalism and even genocide. 

Female Faculty Wrote a Brave Letter to Northwestern about Sexual Harassment, Racism Allegations from Cheerleaders.

“The idea that some of the people taking this class from me might be subjected to the very things we’re discussing, during campus-sanctioned activities,” [History Professor Kate] Masur said, “it’s jarring and disgusting.”

A Look Inside the Green Book, Which Guided Black Travelers Through a Segregated and Hostile America

UCLA historian Scot Brown calls the "Green Book" a "Black GPS" for the Jim Crow era in an overview of the publication that helped African Americans exercise the freedom to travel. 

He Risked His Life Filming A Mississippi Senator's Plantation In 1964

Senator James Eastland of Mississippi justified his segregationist politics with paternalism. Conditions on his family's plantation showed otherwise. 

Behind The Former Slave Narratives Captured By A New Deal Program

Writer Clint Smith: "the narratives are full of those moments that remind you of the personhood of these people who in so much of our teaching of history are sort of these silhouettes or these abstractions."

Politics, Protests, and Pandemics

Historian Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. argues in a new book on epidemics and social upheaval that disease does not inevitably sow discord and hatred; they can be sources of unification. 

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

Katy Hull's book looks to four American fascist sympathizers to conclude that the appeal of fascism reflected anxieties about how the United States could function as a world power and connect communitarian values with national progress. 

The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew

Silvia Federici's critique of the exploitatitve nature of domestic labor as the backbone of capitalist economies is beginning to gain traction as homes are converted to schools and (paid) workplaces, compounding gendered burdens borne mostly by women in America. 

The Arch of Injustice

Historian Steven Hahn reviews Walter Johnson's "The Broken Heart of America," finding that Johnson makes a compelling case that St. Louis is the archetypal American city but is less effective at showing concepts like white supremacy and racial capitalism as dynamic historical processes. 

Henry Louis Gates Jr. on African-American Religion

Jon Meacham reviews Henry Louis Gates's book on the Black church in America; Gates seeks to recover the traditions of social and political activism in churches against skeptics who identify religion with conservatism and quietude. 

Historians Correct Nikki Haley After George Washington Tweet

Nikki Haley's recent tweet suggested that, as president, George Washington helped establish the Constitution (which of course created the office).