Historians in the News 
This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
3/1/2021
Part of Being a Domestic Goddess in 17th-Century Europe Was Making Medicines
Historians Sharon Strocchia, Stephanie Koscak, and Elaine Leong offer insight into the roles of women in producing and administering medicine in the early modern period, both in domestic and public settings. The subject may receive increased attention through a digitization project of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
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SOURCE: Slate
3/3/2021
How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism
by Rebecca Onion
If anyone wants to examine the particulars of Dr. Seuss Enterprises' decision to discontinue the publication of six of the late author's books before jumping in to culture war combat, writer Rebecca Onion's interview with children's literature scholar Philip Nel is a good place to start.
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SOURCE: NPR
3/3/2021
Discovery Of Schoolhouse For Black Children Now Offers A History Lesson
The discovery of an 18th century schoolhouse on the campus of William & Mary offers a chance for public historians to explain the complexity of Black education in colonial Virginia, which taught reading in the hopes of indoctrinating both free and enslaved children with pro-slavery ideology.
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SOURCE: TIME
3/4/2021
People Longing for Movie Theaters During the 1918 Flu Pandemic Feels Very Familiar in 2021
As in 2020, public health concerns closed movie theaters in 1918. But then, without home streaming technology, a fledgling industry was threatened with ruin. Hollywood bounced back because so many Americans missed the theater experience.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
3/4/2020
How Did "Bipartisanship" Become a Goal In Itself? (Podcast)
TNR's "Politics of Everything" podcast discusses how bipartisanship came to be the end of politics instead of a means to achieve other goals. Features historian Julian Zelizer.
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SOURCE: USA Today
3/2/2021
Mock Slave Auctions, Racist Lessons: How US History Class Often Traumatizes, Dehumanizes Black Students
Experts acknowledge that teaching the history of slavery as a brutal and dehumanizing system is difficult. The persistence of assignments that impose humiliation on students shows more work is needed.
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SOURCE: NPR
3/2/2021
'More Dangerous And More Widespread': Conspiracy Theories Spread Faster Than Ever
Kathryn Olmsted says that conspiracy theories have always been part of American politics, but they have become more widespread in the last ten years, and their endorsement by a former president is unprecedented.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
3/3/2021
Online Roundtable: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s ‘Race for Profit’
Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society, will sponsor a virtual roundtable on the award-winning "Race For Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership" with new essays being released beginning March 8.
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SOURCE: New York Times
Should Black Northerners Move Back to the South?
by Tanisha C. Ford
Historian Tanisha C. Ford reviews Charles M. Blow's book, which advocates for a Reverse Great Migration to empower both Black Americans and progressive policies. She concludes it's an intriguing idea but oversimplifies the history of migration, disenfranchisement, and activism by Black southerners and their allies.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/26/2021
The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning
Columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historians Michael W. Fitzgerald, Paul Horton, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Robert Widell, Jr. which shows that Alabamians, and Black Alabamians in particular, have organized to fight both racial oppression and labor exploitation.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/26/2021
America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama
"The terror campaign of 1870 ended the promise of Alabama’s brief Reconstruction era, allowing the so-called Redeemers to pry Alabama from the hands of reform. This was the critical juncture that led to the way things are."
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/26/2021
University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read
The discovery of a 260-year-old structure with such a deep connection to a little-known chapter of the history of Colonial Williamsburg, when the population was more than 50 percent Black and teaching slaves to read was legal, is especially significant, said history professor Jody Lynn Allen.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/25/2021
Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past
Annalee Newitz's book on lost cities debunks the idea of sudden, catastrophic collapse. But the death of cities does show that humanity is vulnerable to change that makes centuries-old ways of life untenable.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/28/2021
Denied a Teaching Job for Being ‘Too Black,’ She Started Her Own School — And a Movement
Scholars Sharon Harley and Jenifer Barclay discuss the obstacles of colorism that Nannie Helen Burroughs overcame to launch an influential school for young Black women and lead the civil rights struggles of the early twentieth century.
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SOURCE: Mass for Shut-ins: The Gin and Tacos Podcast
3/2/2021
The 1976 Swine Flu Fiasco
David Parsons of the "Nostalgia Trap" history podcast joins Mass For Shut-Ins to discuss the Swine Flue vaccine fiasco and how its history has been abused by today's anti-vax movement.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
2/25/2021
Fired for Tweeting?
"In a written statement to The Chronicle, Burnett said, “Collin College is a government organization that has unconstitutionally sought to punish me for my speech as a private citizen."
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SOURCE: TedEd
3/1/2021
Debunking the Myth of the Lost Cause: A Lie Embedded in American History
by Karen L. Cox
Karen L. Cox examines the cultural myth of the Lost Cause.
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SOURCE: Virginian-Pilot
3/1/2021
How a Wave of Segregationist Tributes, from Streets to Schools, Entrenched the Idea of White Supremacy
Understanding the stakes of renaming public buildings, streets, or schools requires understanding the purposeful politics that attached the names of Confederates to public spaces a century ago, say Virginia historians Dan Margolies and Calvin Pearson.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
3/2/2021
The Mega-Ode
The Urban History Association accentuates the positive in academic culture as urbanists salute the people who made a difference for them.
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SOURCE: Talking Points Memo
2/1/2021
Why Biden’s Forceful Endorsement Of Labor Is The Strongest From A POTUS In Decades
Labor historians Karen Sawislak and Erik Loomis discuss how Joe Biden's endorsement of freedom of workers to form a union (without mentioning Amazon in particular) goes against decades-long trends in the political power and cultural esteem of labor unions.
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- Part of Being a Domestic Goddess in 17th-Century Europe Was Making Medicines
- How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism
- Discovery Of Schoolhouse For Black Children Now Offers A History Lesson
- People Longing for Movie Theaters During the 1918 Flu Pandemic Feels Very Familiar in 2021
- How Did "Bipartisanship" Become a Goal In Itself? (Podcast)