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Ken Burns

Benjamin Franklin is the subject of Ken Burns’s next documentary

John Fea   |  March 29, 2022

Here is Mackenzie Farkus of Boston Public Radio: Perhaps what most attracted Burns to document Franklin’s life wasn’t his status as one of America’s Founding Fathers, but rather how Franklin’s life relates to today’s world. “We don’t work on our...

The bones of Sullivan Ballou

John Fea   |  November 24, 2021

If you have watched the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War you might remember Sullivan Ballou. The Union officer stole the show with the letter he wrote to his wife Sarah a week before he was killed at the First...

Ken Burns on Monuments

John Fea   |  June 25, 2020

The documentary filmmaker recently appeared on Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN. Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOwrd2kRQcA&w=560&h=315] I tend to agree with Burns’s case-by-case approach. I am also with Annette Gordon-Reed on non-Confederate monuments....

American History Night With Ken Burns

John Fea   |  March 24, 2020

Thursday night, March 26, 2020. Here is PBS press release: PBS will make the Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History available to its stations beginning March 26. PBS is calling it “American History Night with Ken Burns.” The event happens...

Ken Burns and “Sour Grapes”

John Fea   |  October 4, 2017

Yesterday I had the chance to be part of a small group discussion with Martin Luther King Jr. biographer Taylor Branch.  During the course of the conversation someone asked him if his work had been criticized by academic historians because...

More Reviews of “The Vietnam War”

John Fea   |  September 30, 2017

The Burns-Novick eighteen-hour documentary on the Vietnam War ended earlier this week. I am still trying to get my head around everything I saw.  Since I am not a historian of the war and have not read too much about...

Reviews of Ken Burns’s “The Vietnam War”

John Fea   |  September 20, 2017

I am not an expert on the Vietnam War.  I have not taught this subject in nearly sixteen years.  As a result, I am no position to offer a critique or review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s PBS documentary, The...

Drew Gilpin Faust Defends the National Endowment for the Humanities

John Fea   |  March 9, 2017

Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War historian and president of Harvard University, has taken to the op-ed page of The New York Times today to defend the National Endowment for the Humanities. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Sept. 17, 1862, was the...

Ken Burns Defends the Humanities and Storytelling

John Fea   |  May 10, 2016

Last night documentary film-maker Ken Burns used his National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture to defend humanities and the art of storytelling. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed reports: Ken Burns, the documentary maker who brought the Civil War, the...

What If Ken Burns Produced *Star Wars*?

John Fea   |  December 18, 2015

I know nothing about Star Wars.  I will not be seeing the new film (I honestly do not know the title of it–I will have to look it up).  I have never seen any of the Star War films.  Isn’t...

Does Ken Burns’s *The Civil War* Have a “Lost Cause Narrative?”

John Fea   |  September 2, 2015

Shelby Foote I have seen Ken Burns’s The Civil War  multiple times.  I often showed clips of it when I taught a course on Civil War and Reconstruction.  I was glad to see that PBS will broadcast the documentary on...

Messiah College History Department Recites the Gettysburg Address

John Fea   |  November 20, 2013

Produced by Megan Piette and inspired by Ken Burns: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpsvx3GIG58]...

Ken Burns: “The Address”

John Fea   |  May 3, 2013

Ken Burns is working on a new documentary film about the Civil War.  It is called “The Address” and it chronicles the story of a group of Vermont schoolboys with learning disabilities who memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address.  Here...

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