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Tag Archives: History
Mystery Woman
Patricia Cline Cohen [NHC Fellow 1994-1995] uses the story of the murder of a young prostitute, Helen Jewett, as a lens to view gender, youth, and sexuality in the 19th century United States. Cohen situates issues of gender within the unique historical moment that population expansion, unsupervised youth, the rise of prostitution, and the growth of publicity and the reading public presented in the 1830s. Cohen also problematizes the relationship between sex and murder, noting that the sensationalism surrounding erotic violence was still in its formative stage in the 19th century.
Learning Online
Part of the series of discussions on the history, culture, and ethics of information technology with the cooperation of the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program.
The Sixteen Pleasures
Robert Hellenga talks about his first novel, The Sixteen Pleasures, a tale of Renaissance erotica, modern love, family history, and artistic restoration which offers the reader a luxurious feast of pleasures – many, many more than sixteen according to writer Tillie Olsen.
Fire and Light
Mississippi fire-fighter turned novelist, Larry Brown, describes the heat of life and death encounters in his memoir, On Fire. Arthur Zajonc’s discusses Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind.
War and Democracy
A discussion of the Nazi occupation of Greece and its impact on that country’s social and economic culture and a reflection on the history of democracy in 20th-century Europe.
War and Remembrance
A discussion of the history of World War II, Nazi Germany, and popular memory of the Holocaust.
History Up Close and Personal
Leo Spitzer discusses the Holocaust, cultural memory, and the personal dimensions of the historian’s craft. Fritz Stern reflects on recent German history from personal and professional perspectives.
Culture in Focus
William Brumfield discusses his work as a photographer and historian of Russian architecture. Alex Harris discusses his new book, Red White Blue and God Bless You, a photodocumentary of the landscapes, people, and culture of northern New Mexico.
Public Philosophy
Thomas Flynn discusses the life and work of the modern French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault. Richard Rorty discusses philosophy and the politics of the American left.
Crosscurrents
In two conversations about creative crosscurrents between Europe and the United States, Rita Dove discusses D_rer’s Beauty,? her sequence of poems about the German artist Albrect D_rer, and Robert ter Horst discusses the American historian Henry Adams and the Bloomsbury Groups in England.
Politics and Posterity
Franklin Ford and William Leuchtenburg discuss the John M. Olin Seminar in Political History, which they coordinated at the National Humanities Center. Cynthia Herrup and Mark Kishlansky discuss the history and historiography of the English Revolution in the 17th-century.
From Protest to Power: the Recent History of Civil Rights in the United States Part 4
Clayborne Carson is the author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press) and, with David Garrow, the editor of Eyes on the Prize, America’s Civil Rights Years: A Reader and Guide (Penguin Books).
John Hope Franklin‘s most recent book is George Washington Williams: A Biography (University of Chicago Press).
Breaking New Ground
Joan Thirsk, an agricultural historian, discusses her forthcoming book entitled Alternative Agriculture: a Seventeenth Century Perspective on Past and Present. Hugh West discusses his forthcoming study, From Tahiti to the Terror: Georg Forster and the Sociological Imagination, a book about the 18th-century social observer Georg Forster.
Knowing the Constitution
September 17, 1987, is Constitution Day. How well do Americans know their principal governing document? This edition of Soundings presents two replies to that question, one by Michael Kammen and the other by Joyce Appleby. Joyce Appleby’s books include Capitalism and a New Social Order and Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England. Michael Kammen’s book on the Constitution,A Machine That Would Go of Itself, won the Francis Parkman Prize at the 1987 meeting of the Society of American Historians.
Music and Expression
According to Wendy Allanbrook, cultural historians have described the nature of musical expression in terms of two primary categories–as autonomous, formal, and numerable, but also as effective and imitative of the human and the mundane. Central to Professor Allanbrook’s forthcoming study of the nature of musical expression is the question: Is classic music a special moment in music history, or a model for other musics? By way of illustrating this issue, the examples on this edition of Soundings are from the work’s of Mozart, including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, the Jupiter symphony, and the F major piano sonata.