Category Archives: research

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)

This is a fake

So recently ESPN  did a story about big time college athletes and academics. Exhibit A was a “paper” allegedly turned in by an athlete at UNC. The paragraph, on Rosa Parks, allegedly received an A- Here it is: The internet agrees: this is an outrage. I agree too. This is an F in a class […]

March 28, 2014 – 2:30 pm | By admin | Posted in research, teaching | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

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)

The Illusion of Scarcity

The American Historical Association just called for a six year embargo on the release of dissertations. At the moment, you write a dissertation and it goes to your university’s library, which typically makes a digital copy available to the public, often for free. The AHA argues that if your dissertation is available free in digital […]

July 24, 2013 – 2:17 pm | By admin | Posted in History, research | Comments (3)

Imagining the future in 1880

He set out to design the modern office building, but instead he invented the shopping mall. Few people who visit this building understand just how well it combines the visionary and the preposterous. It used to be the headquarters of the Pension Bureau, which oversaw the benefits paid to Civil War veterans and their families. […]

November 26, 2012 – 2:52 pm | By admin | Posted in AHN, History, research, Unknown DC | Comments (1)

have you got a piece of work….

Have you got some research, a small conclusion, an idea or possibility; some piece of work which isn’t really suitable for the standard journal format? Maybe a piece which doesn’t fit easily in any single discipline? Would you like feedback on an idea you’re struggling with? Would you like to publish this work in a […]

October 16, 2012 – 1:56 pm | By admin | Posted in AHN, History, research, review | Comments (0)

Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?

The question posed above is extremely hard to answer. She doesn’t “look like an indian.” But what do Indians look like? Just to recap: Elizabeth Warren is running for the Senate in Massachusetts. She’s been widely mocked for claiming herself as “native American” at various points in her career. Warren grew up in what’s now […]

September 27, 2012 – 12:06 pm | By admin | Posted in History, research | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Colored Me

This is the marriage license of my great-great grandfather,  born in Ireland in 1854 and married to a Virginia native in 1884. His race, you’ll notice, is given as “colored.” Since when are Irishmen colored? My father found this when he started doing family history after he retired. We mostly laughed, a lot, when he […]

August 30, 2012 – 7:45 pm | By admin | Posted in History, research | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (8)