Savannah is a prime location for understanding the centrality of slavery and race to the national and world economy, and the importance of the city to southern landscapes and the southern economy.
Slavery and Freedom in Savannah
The Normandy Scholar Program on World War II
“Nothing brings history alive like discussing it with students on the spot where it took place.” That’s Professor Charters Wynn, the current Director of the Normandy Scholar Program, a course of study at the University of Texas at Austin that combines a semester of coursework with a three-week trip to historical sites in Europe. “Life-changing” and “unforgettable” are two words that often come up when students describe their experience in the program.
World War I: Teaching at the Museum
At universities, not all teaching takes place in the classroom. This month Not Even Past features a discussion with the curators of The World at War, 1914-1918, the show currently on display at UT's renowned Harry Ransom Center.
Braided History
This braided watch chain comes from a private archive. Similar family archives often end up in the collections of local historical museums or even national repositories like the Library of Congress. This archive is housed in a box in my closet.
Counterfactual History in a New Video Game
American History, in many ways, represents the nation’s résumé. It is a catalog of achievements and events – some good, some regrettable – that are used to encourage citizens and outsiders to buy into the nation.
Digital History: A Primer (Part 2)
Historians won’t be giving up their visits to archives or their days picking notebooks and letters out of boxes any time soon. But the path to those boxes has changed dramatically as institutions and history enthusiasts have been digitalizing and posting their treasures online.
Mapping the Earth, Mapping the Air
Knowing one’s exact location was among the greatest challenges of the human push into the air, as it is in the exploration of any new frontier, before there were such things as aeronautical charts, that is, maps for aerial navigation. It is easy for a generation with pocket sized access to Google Maps to underestimate how different our world looks from above if you have only seen it from ground level.
Twitter for Historians
In his novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne describes the character Uncle Toby and his hobby-horse, the military. A hobby-horse, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a favourite pursuit or pastime,” is something you’ve trotted out and ridden nearly to death. At the risk of losing the remainder of my friends, I am here to once again sing the praises of my hobby-horse, Twitter, and explain why you should be on it if you care about history.
African American History Online
If Digital History is “using new technologies to enhance research and teaching,” as the excellent website from the University of Houston puts it, then African American history is being well-served digitally. In honor of African American History month, I survey here one enormous and useful website that gives us all access to a very wide variety of materials.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001)*
The title of Carey’s best-seller is misleading. The True History of the Kelly Gang is not a “true history” at all, but rather an imagined autobiography of Australia’s greatest folk-hero, the bushranger Ned Kelly and his band of Irish-Australian outlaws.