Tomorrow’s event is called “We the People: a Summer Celebration.” (Live-streaming here.) Here is Antonio Olivo at The Washington Post: This weekend, James Madison’s Montpelier estate will kick off a multiyear project to pay tribute to the nearly 300 enslaved...
Some on the right believe that Colonial Williamsburg’s commitment to telling the full story of the 18th-century city means that the world’s largest living history museum is going “woke.” I would argue that Colonial Williamsburg is trying to tell a...
Matthew Dennis is Professor Emeritus of History and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. This interview is based on his new book, American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). JF: What led you to...
I’ve spent a little time studying Princeton University’s history over the years. My first book was on a Witherspoon student who studied at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) between 1770 and 1772. My second book covered Witherspoon’s role...
It’s at Harvard Schlesinger Library. Here is Jennifer Schuessler at The New York Times: In the corner of a ground-floor gallery at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America sits a small plexiglass case, holding two cowboy...
Have you visited the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.? How about the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina? In this episode, historian Devin Manzullo-Thomas, author of Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion’s Presence of the Past, helps us make sense...
Sam Redman is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This interview is based on his new book, The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience (NYU Press, 2022)....
Clarissa J. Ceglio is Associate Director of Research for Greenhouse Studio and Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on her new book, A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work...
Here is Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation announced that Colonial Williamsburg (CW) received a record $102 million from donors in 2021. The amount is an increase of 42 percent over the previous record of $72 million set in 2019. Last year’s total includes...
Longtime listeners of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast may remember our interview with historian Erin Bartram in Episode 37: “Should You Go Grad School?” In that episode we discussed Bartram’s February 2018 blog post “The Sublimated Grief of...
Historian Karen L. Cox argues that “when it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground.” In this episode, we talk with Cox about the history of Confederate monuments and how the recent racial unrest in the United States...
This is unprecedented. Here is a taste of the Montpelier’s press release: In a first-ever milestone for museums and historic sites that are former places of enslavement, The Montpelier Foundation (TMF) board of directors voted Wednesday, based on a proposal...
Check out Mark Wingfield’s piece at Baptist World Global titled “What to do if you unearth a history of slavery in your church, college, or institution?” Here’s a taste: With increasing attention to the roots of American slavery in religious...
Rowan University students are digitizing artifacts from the Miss America Organization in Atlantic City. What a cool public history project! Here is R. Kenneth Burns at WHYY: Students at Rowan University are going through a treasure chest of American history...
The city of Chicago recently launched a group called The Chicago Monuments Project. Here is the project’s mission statement: The Chicago Monuments Project intends to grapple with the often unacknowledged – or forgotten – history associated with the City’s various municipal...
