Category Archives: History

Posts about history and the profession of history

Who’s a racist?

So recently we’ve seen two really remarkable examples of obtuse, stupid, clownish buffoonery on the subject of race. First scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy suggesting that “the nigroes” would have been better off under slavery, when they learned to pick cotton and could be with the families and had something to do.” Second is the remarkably […]

April 28, 2014 – 1:57 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Comments (3)

Historical Convention Merch

After the most recent OAH a friend a colleague, Adam Rothman, suggested a line of T-shirts. We came up with a few ideas. Feel free to add your own.

April 14, 2014 – 3:03 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Tagged , , | Comments (15)

Blogging and the return of the repressed

Earlier today I was at an OAH roundtable on blogging as scholarship. There were a number of distinguished bloggers there (Anne Little;  Kenneth Owen; Benjamin Alpers; John Fea), all of whom blog in very different styles. The audience was great. I thought I’d post some of my argument about why blogging is valuable as scholarship: […]

April 14, 2014 – 2:23 am | By admin | Posted in History, research | Comments (9)

What do we mean by “racist?”

The term gets used all the time. Ed Kilgore, at Talking Points Memo, says “you don’t have to be a racist to practice racism.” This makes zero sense to me. What is racism? How is it different from prejudice or bigotry? My answer is pretty simple: a racist is a person who believes in the […]

April 9, 2014 – 1:15 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

It was misrepresented

Last week I made a post about the UNC student who allegedly received an A- for a 146 word plagiarized paragraph on Rosa Parks. I thought it smelled funny. Yes athletes are allowed to dodge hard college work–who doesn’t believe that? But this just smelled “off,” for the reasons explained. Well it turns out it […]

April 3, 2014 – 9:45 pm | By admin | Posted in History, teaching | Comments (0)

Corporate Hobbies

The Supreme Court seems poised to radically revise American corporate law, by entertaining the idea that a corporation can have religious beliefs. (Theaporetic is not a corporate lawyer, so if any reader has more accurate knowledge he welcomes the correction to what follows). Hobby Lobby, a privately held corporation, objects to the fact that Obamacare […]

March 27, 2014 – 12:59 pm | By admin | Posted in History, research | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

So are there any good historical movies?

Mr smarty pants critic, theaporetic, thinks Twelve Years a Slave is a bad movie, and thinks he proved why, without having actually seen the movie, quite an absurd position indeed. Criticism is easy–are there any good historical movies? Theaporetic, having a nine year old child, does not go to the movies much because babysitting. But […]

March 21, 2014 – 3:51 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)

More on 12 years a slave

There were lots of stories of slavery and escape from slavery written by the slaves themselves;  a whole genre of North American literature. You can find all the published North American slave narratives collected here, free and in digital form. It’s fantastic resource. Some of the narratives were world renowned in their day, some were […]

March 20, 2014 – 6:45 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Comments (0)

Why I Probably Won’t Ever Watch Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave is based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, who was born in comfortable freedom and kidnapped into slavery. Right there is the problem. The movie is presented as an indictment of the institution of slavery, and beyond that as a particularly vivid and realistic account of the awfulness of slavery. But […]

March 18, 2014 – 3:38 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Tagged , | Comments (10)

What Bitcoin is and isn’t

After the last post on Bitcoin, I’ve been having some interesting discussion with a reader, Jonathon Duerig, about Bitcoin and money. This is the first of a two parter on money and digital technology Bitcoin resembles the traditional gold standard, in that it’s a form of money imagined as outside government interference that can’t be […]

March 13, 2014 – 1:58 pm | By admin | Posted in History, Money | Comments (1)