By Nathan Stone Preso en su lecho mi rio pasa, pero se acerca su libertad. Sus aguas dulces ya son saladas; ya no eres rio, eres el mar. A prisoner within its banks, my river rolls on, soon to find freedom. Your sweet waters now have grown salty; you’re no river, now, you are […]
Environment
Death, Danger, and Identity at 12,000 Feet
by Jesse Ritner On February 1, 1894, Frank Cook stumbled down from the Elk Mountain range, passed through the frozen town of Ashcroft, and trudging through the deep Colorado snow arrived in Aspen, Colorado. His mining partner, Mr. Spake, was dead. Mining accidents were common in late nineteenth-century Colorado. Mr. Cook, likely weary and cold […]
For Native Americans, Land Is More Than Just the Ground Beneath Their Feet
By Kelli Mosteller This article originally appeared in The Atlantic on September 17, 2016. Thousands of Native American protesters are currently fighting against the proposed construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. They are doing more than just trying to protect their land. They are fighting for their culture—and, as the Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke […]
US Survey Course: The American West, Native Americans, and Environmental History
During the summer of 2016, we will be bringing together our previously published articles, book reviews, and podcasts on key themes and periods in the history of the USA. Each grouping is designed to correspond to the core areas of the US History Survey Courses taken by undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Remembering Chernobyl
In the early morning hours of April 26th, 1986, Chernobyl reactor number four experienced a series of explosions that resulted in the world’s most devastating nuclear disaster to date.
Diasporic Charity and Salonica’s Jewish Community after the Fire of 1917
The minutes of a 1922 meeting of the Council of the Jewish Community of Salonica, today’s Thessaloniki in Greece, recorded a cordial but contentious discussion.
Sowing the Seeds of Communism: Corn Wars in the USA
Today we often associate hybrid or genetically modified corn with agricultural monopolies, big business, and capitalism, in the early Cold War some feared that the rise of hybrid corn would sow the seeds of Communism in the United States.
The Public Historian: Giving it Back
Edward Shore recounts the torture of writer’s block and how a love for doing public scholarship helped him to overcome it. He underscores the need for historians to engage the public and to use scholarship for the advancement of social justice. He recalls his experience doing fieldwork for his dissertation on the history of the Quilombo Movement in the Atlantic Rainforest of southern São Paulo.
Notes from the Field: Northeast Japan after the Tsunami
I lived near the port city of Kesennuma, in northeastern Japan, from 2006 to 2008. That was several years before the event they call 3/11. That’s March 11, 2011, the day a record-setting earthquake and tsunami devastated the area and cost over 18,000 lives.
Boomtown, USA: An Historical Look at Fracking
Over the past five years or so, the United States has been experiencing an enormous oil boom. Hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking,” has made it possible—and profitable—to drill through thick rock formations, opening up vast pockets of domestic oil and gas across the country.