By Alan Garcia Before I became an avid follower of history blogs and museum social media accounts, one of my favorite pastimes was studying the liner notes of the world music CDs available at my public library. This was occurring at the same time that social media platforms and instant messaging was improving the way […]
Music
“London is Drowning and I, I Live by the River”: The Clash’s London Calling at 40
By Edward Watson On February 7, Seattle’s non-profit broadcaster KEXP headed to London for their seventh annual International Clash Day. In celebration of The Clash’s London Calling turning 40 in December 2019, KEXP organized a 4-day live broadcast in Seattle and London, featuring performances from contemporary bands and covers of The Clash’s songs. Their intention […]
Demystifying “Cool:” A Brief History
by Kate Grover When I was nineteen, I was bestowed with some of the highest praise a person can receive. It happened at a rehearsal for The Vagina Monologues (go figure…) when some cast members I hadn’t met approached me for the first time: “You’re Kate, right? Cool Kid Kate?” “What?” “Cool Kid Kate. There’s […]
Before Hamilton
By Peter Kunze In a recent interview with Fusion about how Hamilton (2015) “revolutionized” Broadway for performers of color, the Tony Award-winning lead, Leslie Odom, Jr., recalled, “I saw a reading of Hamilton at Vassar. There’s four men of color on stage, singing a song about friendship and brotherhood, and it undid me. I had never seen […]
Popular Culture in the Classroom
By Nakia Parker Popular culture can be a powerful tool in helping students understand history. Music, film, TV, fiction, and paintings offer effective and creative ways to bring primary source material into the classroom. Last fall, I gave a lecture on Black Power and popular culture in an introductory course on African American History. We […]
Two Bowies, One Knife
“I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.”
The Seldoms Bring LBJ and the 1960s Into the Present in Their Investigation of How Power Goes
In the contemporary dance theater work Power Goes, which arrives at McCullough Theatre on the campus of the University of Texas on September 16th and 18th, courtesy of Texas Performing Arts, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the LBJ Presidential Library, the Chicago-based dance ensemble, The Seldoms, propose that we can dance our way deeply into the historical past.
History Museums: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
What makes a history museum “work”?
Hearing the Roaring Twenties: The New Archive (No. 12)
Photographs, primary documents and personal recollections offer important glimpses, but one digital history site specifically wants to understand how it sounded.
Sound Maps: The New Archive (No. 6)
In the study of history, it’s easy to fall back on national identities: “Irish music,” an “English accent,” “American Exceptionalism” are just a few examples. But a closer examination of the local cultures—music, dialects, history—that exist within nations demonstrates how misleading those generalizations can be. Just look through one of the British Library’s “Sound Maps” and you’ll be convinced.