Southern Baptist Theological Seminary church historian John Wilsey recently took a shot at Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne in a review published at a conservative website called Ad Fontes. Though Wilsey shows much more empathy than some...
historical interpretation
The San Francisco Board of Education and the “Just-the-Facts-Fallacy”
Last week we called your attention to a decision by the San Francisco Board of Education’s decision to rename forty-four schools. I titled that post “When a school board ignores history.” Now Jonathan Zimmerman of the University of Pennsylvania has...
How Future Historians Might Use Your Quarantine Diary
A couple weeks ago I encouraged everyone to keep a coronavirus diary. Read that post here. Over at The New York Times, Amelia Nierenberg reports on the diaries and journals that “tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.” ...
A Historian and a Theologian on History and Progress
From the middle of the 1800s to the middle of the 1900s, more or less, the search for exemplars gave way to the second approach to history: the projection of progress. History came to be seen as a single linear...
Should Historians Judge People by the Standards of Their Time?
I get this all the time: “Let’s not judge slaveholders based on present-day morality because they were products of their time.” Indeed, slaveholders were products of their time. The historian’s primary goal is to try to understand them in context...
Satanic Exorcism or Church Picnic?
This image has been making the rounds on social media: Actually, this image has probably been photo-shopped. Here is the original: Read more about this image at the Library of Congress....
African-Americans at Colonial Williamsburg
The Virginia Gazette is running an informative piece on interpreting the African-American experience at Colonial Williamsburg. Here is a taste: Established in 1926, Colonial Williamsburg opened its first public site in 1932. Though African-American interpretation wouldn’t start in earnest as a fleshed...
Race, Slavery, and Historical Interpreters
Over at The Outline, Zoe Beery writes about Cheyney McKnight, an African American historical interpreter at Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island. Here is a taste: Over the last ten years, McKnight has built a career as a living historian who...
Historical Thinking and the Nunes Memo
How might a historian interpret the now-famous Nunes memo? Mark Byrnes, chair of the Department of History at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, breaks it down for us. Here is a taste of his History News Network piece: “The...
More on David Barton’s Use of That John Adams Quote
Yesterday we did a lengthy post showing how Christian Right activist David Barton manipulated a John Adams quote to make it sound like Adams supported the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. Barton is up to his...
Master Local Historians
This looks like a great program. Humanities Tennessee has awarded the American Association of State and Local History a grant to pilot Master Local Historians (MLS). Here is the press release and description of the program: AASLH is proud to...
Was John Adams a Christian?
In light of the recent Twitter debate between Annette Gordon-Reed and Sam Haselby on the religion of Thomas Jefferson, I thought I would call your attention to a blog post from my friend Matthew Hunter. I don’t know if Hunter was...
Doris Kearns Goodwin on the Need for Empathy
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin appeared yesterday as part of the “roundtable” segment on NBC’s Meet the Press. When the topic turned to Brexit, host Chuck Todd turned to Kearns-Goodwin for some insight. Here is how she responded: Well, I...
#Whystudyhistory Invades the World of Marketing
Do you want to be an effective marketing analyst? Then study history. If you are a longtime reader of The Way of Improvement Leads Home you know about Cali Pitchel. She has written a lot for the blog and has...
Slavery and Historical Interpretation at Monticello, Montpelier, and Ash Lawn-Highland
C-Ville, a website covering life in the Charlottesville, VA area, is running a nice piece on slavery interpretation at the homes of Virginia presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Here is a taste: The sickeningly horrible institution of...
National Parks and Difficult History
Little Rock Central High School Over at We’re History, Benjamin Arrington of the National Park Service lists seven National Parks that are interpreting “difficult American history.” They are: 1. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, MO2. Brown v. Board of Education...
Are Madison’s Notes From the Constitutional Convention Unreliable?
Perhaps “unreliable” is too strong a word, but most historians would have no qualms about saying that Madison’s notes do not provide an objective account of what happened in that Philadelphia summer of 1787.Mary Sarah Bilder, a law professor a...
Mandy McMichael Reports from the Meeting of the American Society of Church History
I am pleased to welcome Mandy McMichael to The Way of Improvement Leads Home family. Mandy is Assistant Professor of Religion at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama and a former Grant Wacker student at Duke Divinity School. She is working...
Serendipity in the Archives
Last week the Messiah College History Department hosted Philip Deloria of the University of Michigan for our annual American Democracy Lecture. Deloria was very gracious with his time. Not only did he deliver an evening lecture to about 350 students,...
Natalie Zemon Davis Shows How to Read a Primary Source
This is fascinating. Watch a master historian make sense of a seventeenth-century Dutch inventory. This interview was conducted as part of an exhibit on Margrieta van Varick at the New York Historical Society. Thanks to Karen Kupperman for calling this...