From the editors: One of the joys of working on Not Even Past is our huge library of amazing content. Below we’ve updated and republished Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s brilliant and moving review of Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s magisterial Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States. I first came across Felipe Fernández-Armesto many more years ago than […]
Environmental Humanities: Five Non-History Books I Recommend from Comps
By Jesse Ritner For graduate students in History, comprehensive exams (also known as orals, qualifying exams, or comps) are a crucial milestone on the way to finishing the Ph.D. I took my comprehensive exams in the Fall of 2020, defending about five weeks after the first COVID-19 isolation orders. Yet even without a pandemic, reading […]
Local Memory: Telling Austin’s Musical History
Local Memory: A History of Music in Austin is a digital public history project by Brian Jones and Michael Schmidt. We created Local Memory to document less-familiar chapters of Austin’s musical history. Anyone familiar with the culture of the Texas capital likely already knows Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and the college town’s reputation as […]
The Fight for Freedom and Justice: A Forum with Formerly Incarcerated Black Women Leading the Movement
This event featured a panel of formerly incarcerated Black women who are leading the fight for justice. The speakers discussed their work to empower justice-involved women and their efforts to build a more equitable future for those impacted by the system of mass incarceration. This event was hosted by Dr. Talitha LeFlouria and students from […]
15 Minute History – Afro-Indigenous Histories of the US
Guest: Kyle Mays, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at UCLA Host: Alina Scott, PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin Afro-Indigenous histories are central to the history of the United States, tribal sovereignty, and civil rights. Today, Dr. Kyle Mays (Saginaw Chippewa) author […]
15 Minute History –Connected Histories of Cuba and the United States
Guest: Ada Ferrer, Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University Host: Alina Scott, PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin While the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War are important aspects of the United States and Cuba’s shared history, they are not […]
15 Minute History – The 1844 Philadelphia Riots
Guest: Zachary M. Schrag, Professor of History at George Mason University Host: Alina Scott, PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin In 1844, Philadelphia, a hub for Irish immigration to the United States, witnessed a series of violent Nativist riots that targeted Irish Americans and Roman Catholic churches. In […]
Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckley, and the Queer History of the Old Clothes Scandal
In 1867, less than three years after the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, his (now widowed) wife and former first lady, Mary, traveled to New York in hopes of securing funds to cover her mounting expenses. Having acquired a significant amount of debt prior to her husband’s reelection and finding herself in an even […]
Diversity, National Identity, and the Fraught History Behind the State Department’s Search for Diplomats Who “Look Like America”
By John Gleb The American foreign policymaking establishment has a diversity problem. The problem is so serious that it has spawned its own in-joke, which mocks top American diplomats for being “pale, male, and [educated at] Yale.” Statistics back up this stereotype. According to a recent audit conducted by the Government Accountability Office, leadership cohorts […]
“We may expect nothing but shacks to be erected here”: An Environmental History of Downtown Austin’s Waterloo Park
By Katherine Leah Pace [1] From the Editors: This article is accompanied by a comment from Edmund T. Gordon, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies & Vice Provost for Diversity at the University of Texas at Austin. Such comments are a new feature for Not Even Past designed to provide different ways to […]