This past weekend’s football frenzy—the NFL playoffs (huzzah for the Patriots!) and the college football championship game (congratulations to THE Ohio State University)—got me thinking about how much Americans love this sport, and how extensive the cultural and media infrastructure is that aids and abets this love. And then I started thinking: . . .
Read MoreThis past weekend, historians of all stripes converged on New York City for the American Historical Association annual meeting. As predicted, the hotel lobbies and concourses were packed with women and men wearing blue and gray suits, sweaters and slacks (ugh, that word! slacks), and dark coats and sensible shoes. Sadly, no . . .
Read MoreEvery year between Christmas and New Year’s, many young historians (and some older ones) undergo a ritual of sorts. It begins with The Fretting and The Staring At One’s Closet. It quickly turns to The Frantic Hurling of Hangers, with clothing still attached. This is often followed by The Rush to The . . .
Read MoreLet’s imagine that you wake up one morning after many years of writing and speaking and teaching in your academic specialty. You have tenure, you have written a lot of books and articles and book reviews, and colleagues across the profession (and sometimes, complete strangers) know who you are. But you wake . . .
Read MoreAs I turned off the highway and onto the county road, I made the call. My husband answered. “I’m going in,” I said. “Okay,” he replied, “Let me know when you’re out.” We hung up and I drove on, squinting in the sun, trying to find the brown road sign denoting a . . .
Read MoreIt is a truth universally acknowledged that historians are not particularly fashion-forward. The sartorial stereotypes persist: the tweed jacket with elbow patches for men, the flowy linen ensembles for women. Glasses. Sensible shoes. A fine layer of chalk dust covering all. While I haven’t seen many elbow patches lately, it is true . . .
Read MoreAlong with chocolate frosted donuts at the local pool (a treat after swim lessons), road trips were the defining events of my childhood summers. My mother was not a fan of airplanes and so every August we would pile into the car before dawn on a Saturday and head out across the . . .
Read MoreThere is much to love about road trips. Seeing towns, cities, and landscapes for the first time; that sense of being in control of your own fate; sampling local cuisines and cocktails. But for people like me, who think they like adventure but are actually not super-adventurous, road trips can also be . . .
Read MoreLast week on Historista I urged my academic colleagues to call attention to the best historians writing today (or the most inspiring works, or however else they would like to categorize such matters), in response to James McPherson’s list of old white dudes in his New York Times interview. In response, Kevin . . .
Read MoreI haven’t written about the academic profession much on Historista, mostly because such topics always seem a little “inside baseball.” But last week, the New York Times published a “By the Book” interview with James McPherson, professor emeritus at Princeton University and one of the most well-known historians of the Civil War . . .
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