The Kansas City Chiefs just won the 2023 Super Bowl earlier this month. This is a moment in the sun for Kansas City. But it’s also a good opportunity for me to bring up a pet theory I have. I...
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The Arena
What I am reading: Brian Scoles
How did I become a quirky reader? In large part, I blame it on the World Book Encyclopedia. I can only imagine how many hours I joyfully wasted on my guilty pleasure. This probably tells you something about the social...
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East Palestine, Asbury, and some notes on my mom
My mother hails from East Palestine, Ohio. Her roots there run deep. Around 1908, her grandfather left his Tyler, West Virginia home with his young family—including their toddler son, George, my grandfather—in search of steady work. They traveled north up...
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Ideas in progress: Amanda McCrina
What is the focus of your current book project? What are the main stories that you hope to tell in this book? My current project is a historical spy thriller set in postwar London, in the run-up to the Victory...
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Historical reflections on civilians and war one year into the invasion of Ukraine
Eleven years ago this month, I had the privilege of co-organizing (with the amazing Nicola Foote, a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean) a conference on civilians and warfare in world history. We eventually published an edited collection of...
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The war in Ukraine and the struggle over cynicism
This Friday, February 24th, will mark the one-year anniversary since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Several posts on this blog this week, therefore, will reflect on different aspects of this war. It’s very curious how negatively some...
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What I am reading: John Ferling
I am working on a book on America’s Revolutionary War, so most of my reading of late has focused on that conflict. But I am a voracious and omnivorous reader and I break away from the eighteenth century when possible,...
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Studying history with nuance and context: some advice to graduate students
Last weekend I gave a keynote address at a graduate history conference on power and struggle that was organized by students at the University of Alabama. I encouraged the graduate students to embrace complexity and nuance in their historical study,...
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Ideas in progress: Ivana Greco on American homemakers
What is the focus of your current book project? What are the big questions that you are investigating and the main stories that you hope to tell in this book? I am currently working on a book about American homemakers....
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Our brave new world unfolding: Whole Body Gestational Donation
In his 1932 novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley described an imagined future world, where pregnancy as we know it no longer exists. Freed from the complex and repressive requirements of marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth, the liberated citizens of this...
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A common fund of knowledge
In his 2010 book about higher education, The Marketplace of Ideas, Louis Menand writes that: “In a meritocratic society, citizens need a common fund of knowledge, a kind of cultural lingua franca, to prevent politically dangerous divisions from developing.” This...
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What I Am Reading: Colleen Vasconcellos
I have loved books since I was old enough to read. Some of my most treasured memories are quiet afternoons that I spent with my mom at the public library, testing the seams of a ratty Book of the Month...
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For Today’s College Students, the Future Is Healthcare – But What Is Our Country’s Future?
We’ve heard many laments about the recent sharp declines in the number of humanities majors on college campuses, but something more profound is happening than merely a shift away from the liberal arts or a new college emphasis on careers....
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Ideas in Progress: Jonathan Den Hartog on John Jay
Jonathan Den Hartog is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He is hard at work during a university sabbatical. The Arena caught up with him to pose some questions… What is...
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Vocation and Public University Education: Reflections on Developments in Florida and Beyond
On a sweltering mid-August day in 1999, the day before I began my first year of college at the University of Virginia, I timidly knocked on the office door of the legendary David Kovacs, a world-known scholar of Euripides (although...
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Finding the Good: NBA Father Figures
We have many cultural commentators today decrying the loss of the traditional family and the decline of fatherhood. Some of their concerns seem grounded in the previous decades—divorce is down, for example, and fathers are more engaged than they were....
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Equity and Justice at a Harvard Abortion Conference
Last week I attended a conference on abortion that was held at Harvard University. It was a fascinating conference, partly because it brought together both supporters and opponents of legal abortion who in many cases shared a belief in expanded...
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Complicity and the Failure to Care
In December 2022, one of the biggest international news stories was the conviction of a 97-year-old German woman for being accessory to murder during the Holocaust. She was a teenager at the time of her crimes, 1943-1945, but she was...
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Welcome to the Arena
In his essay that launched Current in 2021, Eric Miller exhorted readers and writers to join him “In the Arena” and have some intellectual fun in exploring topics that are, most of the time, quite serious. And, indeed, in a...
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“The Arena” is coming to Current
When you wake up on Wednesday morning and point your browser to Current you will notice a change on the home page. Starting February 1, 2022, Current will be hosting a new blog called “The Arena.” It is a group...
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