Blog Archive
The Resistance Files: How Will We Remember What Happened in Charlottesville?
By Gerard Fitzgerald Most nights I walk or jog 4-6 miles and my route takes me through the “Academical Village” at UVA. It is a beautiful and yet very conflicted historical space. Built in part by slaves, the design – and especially the neoclassical Rotunda – really can open the mind, . . .
Read MoreHistorians Take on White Supremacist Memorials: A Round-Up
Since the tragic events in Charlottesville, many scholars of Civil War memory have been on the front lines of a public discussion about the meaning of white supremacist memorials, and their future in our nation’s civil and collegiate landscapes. You will find below links to historian-authored op-eds and blog posts, listed in . . .
Read MoreTransforming White Supremacist Memorials: Two Proposals
[Author’s note: an earlier version of this post referred to these objects as “Confederate memorials.” I have changed all references to them here to “White Supremacist memorials” or “memorials to White Supremacy” in order to highlight the origin of their creation, and the belief system underlying arguments for their continued existence in . . .
Read MoreOn your Marks … Get Set … Write! Lessons from the Great British Bake Off
I began watching “The Great British Bake Off” during a research trip in New Mexico. I had been hearing about this show for a while but had never taken a look, until three seasons of it appeared on Netflix (under its PBS title, “The Great British Baking Show”). I was instantly charmed . . .
Read MoreThe Resistance Files: Francisco Rodriguez and Anthony Burns: Boston’s History of Deportation
By Chace Howland Boston, Massachusetts. 2017 As the cries and staccato chants from protestors echo in the streets of Boston, Francisco Rodriguez—a father of two American citizens, small business owner, honest tax-payer, and aspiring American—sits nervously by himself in the Suffolk County House of Corrections. He is awaiting deportation to El Salvador, . . .
Read MoreThe Resistance Files: How Medicaid Changed My Life
By Sarah Handley-Cousins When my first child was born, I had just started my second year of a Master’s program in History. Her father was going into his second year of law school. It wasn’t exactly the best time to have a baby. We were broke, working part-time, and going to school. . . .
Read MoreThe Resistance Files: Want to Make an Impact? Try County Politics
By Julie A. Mujic, Ph.D. As I fought to recover from the shock and trauma of the 2016 presidential election, I struggled to figure out how to participate in moving the cause forward. I know that as a professor, I am training the next generation but I want to make an impact . . .
Read MoreWhy the Civil War West Mattered (and Still Does)
In two recent columns for Civil War Times, historian Gary Gallagher repeats many arguments he has made in the past dismissing scholarly work on the Civil War West – a theater that he defines in his August 2017 column as extending from the Appalachians to the Pacific coast, and from North Carolina . . .
Read MoreThe Resistance Files: How to Fight Censorship in the Age of Trump
Daniel Gorman Jr. If there is an upside to the first two months of the Trump administration, it is the way that archivists, scientists, and journalists have fought this presidency’s anti-intellectual policies. In the past five months, groups of so-called “guerrilla archivists” downloaded federal climate data before it was deleted, ensuring . . .
Read MoreThe Resistance Files: Making Good on the Promises of America, in 1876 and 2026
By Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz Last Tuesday Donald J. Trump gave his first address to a joint session of Congress. In it, he made repeated referrals to the impending 250th anniversary of the United States, which will take place nine years from now—assuming our democracy survives the current administration. After proclaiming that a “new . . .
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