I posted this back in March 2006, but decided to showcase it since my Civil War Memory classes will be meeting today to discuss James McPherson’s essay on the UDC and their efforts to control and shape the content of history textbooks at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article is titled, “Long-Legged Yankee [...]
Teaching
Thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on yesterday’s post on Howard Zinn. I am not surprised to find that those of you in the college trenches have not come across the book in any of your department’s courses. One of you noted that the book did not receive much attention [...]
Update: Looks like Williams has uncovered more evidence in support of the popularity and pervasiveness of A People’s History in college classrooms. What evidence? It turns out his publisher says so on its website as well as a writer for the Socialist Work. And there you have it. My guess is that at this very [...]
I don’t need to be told by some independent source that I have an awesome job. Still, it doesn’t hurt to have it confirmed. 1. Mathematician 2. Actuary 3. Statistician 4. Biologist 5. Software Engineer 6. Computer Systems Analyst 7. Historian 8. Sociologist 9. Industrial Designer 10. Accountant.
Dimitri Rotov seems to be perplexed over what is being billed as the first major event of Virginia’s Civil War sesquicentennial commemoration. Since I am on the advisory board for Virginia’s Sesquicentennial Commission I thought I might say a few words about what went into the decision to begin in 2009. On April 29 the [...]
It’s nice to see the Museum of the Confederacy taking advantage of YouTube as a form of outreach. A few months ago they started a series of short videos on various subjects that feature their talented staff as well as the museum’s extensive collection of artifacts. This video focuses on Turner Ashby and includes interviews [...]
I am doing quite a bit of reading over this holiday break. One of the books I am making my way through is Capitol Men by Philip Dray. The book tells the story of the principal black leaders in Congress during Reconstruction. It’s well written and does a thorough job of explaining both the backgrounds [...]
How often do we hear from certain quarters about the overwhelming bias among so-called liberal academics who stifle free-thinking and use their classrooms as bully pulpits? Most of these claims are made by folks who have little or no experience in academia and do so as a way to reinforce what can only be described [...]
