Here is Harvard historian David Armitage: It is with deep sorrow that I share news of the death of Bernard Bailyn (1922-2020) earlier today. Truly a giant: a fine friend, inspirational colleague and unmatched historian of early America and the […]
historiography
Os Guinness’s Appeal to the Past is Deeply Problematic
Watch Christian speaker and author Os Guinness deliver a speech titled 1776 vs. 1789: the Roots of the Present Crisis. It is part of an event hosted by the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Someone sent it to me […]
The Author’s Corner with Thomas Richards
Thomas Richards Jr. teaches history at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy. This interview is based on his new book, Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). JF: What led you to write Breakaway Americas? TR: This book […]
White Supremacy, Capitalism, and a New Book on the History of St. Louis
Is capitalism racist? If you answer yes, you are one of the cool kids in the historical profession right now. Scholars working on the connections between capitalism and slavery have produced some interesting, helpful, provocative, and controversial work. Much of […]
Remembering Donald Dayton
Theologian and church historian Donald W. Dayton has died. While I was a student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School pursuing an M.A. in American church history, I read a lot of Dayton. As a young evangelical, I was passionate about […]
The Author’s Corner with Gregory Downs
Gregory Downs is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. This interview is based on his new book, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (University of North Carolina […]
The 1619 Project: Debate Continues
When we last left the debate on the 1619 Project, Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz leveled more criticism of the project in a piece at The Atlantic. Social media historians (and some non-historians who are advancing informed and not-so-informed opinions) […]
What Do You Wish You Had Learned in the First Semester of Your History Graduate Program?
Recently, Baylor University history professor Andrea Turpin asked her Twitter followers a question about her upcoming graduate-level historiography class: Historians: I am teaching graduate historiography in the fall and would love to know: What is something you wish you had […]
Hayden White on the Humanities
Hayden White, the author of Metahistory and the champion of narrative history, died in 2018. The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a transcript of a radio interview he did in 2008 with Stanford literature professor Robert Pogue Harrison. Here is a taste of […]
The Relevance of the Enlightenment (#AHA19)
We are thrilled to have Megan Jones, a history teacher at The Pingry School in Martinsville, New Jersey, writing for us this weekend from the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago. Here is her first dispatch. –JF […]
Gender History at #AHA19
Over at Perspectives on History, Colgate University historian Monica Mercado “takes stock” of gender history at this weekend’s annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Here is a taste: More than 30 years after Joan Scott first argued for gender as […]
The Revival of Midwestern History
Jon Lauck of the University of South Dakota is one of the growing number of scholars trying to bring back the history of Midwest. Check out his books: From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and […]
Tweet Thread of the Day: The Historiography of American Conservatism
Last weekend Politico published historian Geoffrey Kabaservice‘s piece “Liberals Don’t Know Much About Conservative History.” Kabaservice writes: The end-of-century victories of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, however, forced historians to realize that conservatism could no longer be dismissed as a mere road […]
The Author’s Corner with Paul Escott
Paul Escott is Reynolds Professor of History at Wake Forest University. This interview is based on his new book, Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research (The University Press of Kentucky, 2018). JF: What led you to write Rethinking the Civil War Era? PE: I […]
Mary Beth Norton Was the First Historian to Use the Word “Gender” in *The William and Mary Quarterly*
The phrase “African American” was not used in the WMQ until 1999. Check out Michael McDonnell‘s piece at Panorama on the William and Mary Quarterly‘s searchable index. For those of you unfamiliar with the William and Mary Quarterly, it is the premier journal of […]
A Short Survey of Reconstruction Historiography
Do you need a quick primer on the historiography of Reconstruction? If so, check out Allen Guelzo‘s short piece at History News Network: “The History of Reconstruction’s Third Phase.” Here is a taste: Understanding Reconstruction as a bourgeois revolution – […]
What Should We Make Of Populism?
Over at Politico, Joshua Zeitz wonders if American historians were wrong when they said populism was a “good thing.” A taste: Imagine, if you will, that millions of hard-working Americans finally reached their boiling point. Roiled by an unsettling pattern of […]
A High School Student is Asking About Leopold von Ranke.
Apparently a high school student is sending e-mails to historians asking them about 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke. The student is interested in whether or not these historians believe in “objectivity” in the writing of history. As some of […]
The Historiography of the American Revolution: A Timeline
For all of you American history graduate students who need to master the historiography of the American Revolution in order to pass your comprehensive exams, recent Yale Ph.D Michael Hattem is here to help. Check out his historiography of the […]
More on the Museum of the History of American History
A couple of weeks ago we published a post on Pulitzer Prize-winner T.J. Stiles‘s idea to have a museum devoted to American historiography. We had fun with this idea on Twitter, as our post indicates. Stiles has now floated this […]