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May 26, 2015

J. Matthew Gallman on the Civil War History of the Word “Shoddy”

The word “shoddy” originated to describe a poor product and not a sloppy worker. The term, which first appeared in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, came out of the world of textile manufacturing. Shoddy was a sort of cheap cloth made by pressing together scraps of reclaimed wool. This inferior-quality material was inexpensive, but it would not stand up under heavy use. The Civil War saw the heyday of shoddy, both as a textile product and as an evocative term. And the evolving use of the word during the war years speaks volumes about how Northerners used the popular media to make sense of this terrible war. Continue Reading J. Matthew Gallman on the Civil War History of the Word “Shoddy”

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
May 20, 2015

Daniel J. Tortora: Why Hollywood Should Take Notice of the Anglo-Cherokee War

History-based films serve as a teaching tool, spark an interest in the past, and provide perspective on issues in modern society. But I have yet to find a gripping, historically accurate film on eighteenth-century southern history. It is time that Hollywood takes notice of the Anglo-Cherokee War. Continue Reading Daniel J. Tortora: Why Hollywood Should Take Notice of the Anglo-Cherokee War

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Film/Guest Bloggers/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
May 18, 2015

Toby L. Parcel: Can Neighborhood Schools Also Be Diverse Schools?

Are preferences for neighborhood schools and diverse schools really polar opposites? As Wake County has debated policies of public school assignments over the last several years, many have framed the debate this way. Media coverage often juxtaposes assignment plans that promote diversity in schools and classrooms with others that place more emphasis on children attending schools close to home. Citizen groups have formed on both sides. Races for school board have focused closely on candidate preferences. In The End of Consensus: Diversity, Neighborhoods, and the Politics of Public School Assignments, Andy and I have discovered that despite this very public polarization, many citizens actually favor both diverse and neighborhood schools. Continue Reading Toby L. Parcel: Can Neighborhood Schools Also Be Diverse Schools?

Categories Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers
May 15, 2015

David Gilbert: Who Owns Black Culture?: Racial Appropriation and the Marketplace

The reason social critics and entertainers still point out white appropriation when they see it is because the American public, and its leaders, have not matured the way black music and culture have. Even though millions of whites may profess to love and respect black music, their daily decisions—and those of their elected and institutional leaders—indicate that they do not love black people. Continue Reading David Gilbert: Who Owns Black Culture?: Racial Appropriation and the Marketplace

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Music
May 13, 2015

William Marvel: Sacrificing General Sherman

As stern and formidable an opponent as Confederate soldiers and civilians found William Tecumseh Sherman, the general always insisted that he would accept them as fellow countrymen as soon as they submitted to federal authority. He proved as good as his word, especially after hearing President Lincoln’s conciliatory instructions at their City Point conference, late in March of 1865. When he cornered Joe Johnston in North Carolina, less than three weeks later, the two negotiated a complicated surrender agreement that essentially established terms for peace and reunion. It seems odd that neither recognized how far they had exceeded their authority. Continue Reading William Marvel: Sacrificing General Sherman

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History/Military Studies/North Carolina
May 12, 2015

Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett: Digitization with a Bit of Resentment

These technological leaps shouldn’t surprise me. Growing up in the newspaper business, I collected the fallen metal letters as the journeymen printers in the back shop set the type for my mother’s small newspaper—fingers flying, somehow managing to set whole pages without errors despite the challenge of doing it all backwards as necessitated by the printing method. (All the more impressive given that more often than not, the printers had enjoyed their liquid dinners at the Legion Hall down the street.)

By the time I became a reporter at age 19, the shift to phototypesetting was solidly in the works and by the time I left the Seattle Times in 2003 to research my book about Golden, the whole journalistic process from note-taking to layout took place on computer screens, and the printing press was miles away. Continue Reading Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett: Digitization with a Bit of Resentment

Categories Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/North Carolina
May 11, 2015

Marianne Gingher: Amazing Place Is a NY Times Bestseller

It seems fitting that I should document the AMAZING PLACEment of this wonderful book on the New York Times Bestseller List. Thursday, May 7, 2015, I got word it was named #8 by the New York Times Bestseller list for the TRAVEL category. Continue Reading Marianne Gingher: Amazing Place Is a NY Times Bestseller

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Literature/Local Indy Booksellers/North Carolina/The Book Biz
May 11, 2015

Timothy P. Spira: Hiking Rainbow Falls Trail

One of my favorite waterfall hikes in the southern Appalachians is the Rainbow Falls Trail in western North Carolina, just south of Lake Toxaway. Beginning in Gorges State Park, the 4-mile (round-trip) trail soon enters Pisgah National Forest, where it follows the Horsepasture River (a designated Wild and Scenic River) along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Four waterfalls occur along this stretch of the river, including Rainbow Falls, a near-vertical cascade about 125 feet high with a large plunge pool at the base. Few waterfalls in the southern Appalachians are as spectacular (and powerful) as this one. Continue Reading Timothy P. Spira: Hiking Rainbow Falls Trail

Categories Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/Hiking/Nature/North Carolina/Travel
May 6, 2015

Barbara W. Ellis: 10 Tips for Attracting Birds to Your Landscape

Feeders are just one option for attracting birds to your yard. The way landscape plantings are arranged, the plants you grow, and the gardening techniques you use all play roles in encouraging birds to make a home in your backyard.

Use the ten tips below to welcome a wider variety of birds to your landscape. You will find more information on attracting birds and other wildlife, including lists of recommended native plants, and plants that attract hummingbirds, in Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide. Continue Reading Barbara W. Ellis: 10 Tips for Attracting Birds to Your Landscape

Categories Author blog entry/Birds & Birding/Gardening/Guest Bloggers
April 27, 2015

Caroline Field Levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl: A Third Way

Our decision to focus on the inner life of hotels might seem rather whimsical, but it wasn’t. The truth is, we were looking for the right instrument, for an angle on contemporary life that we could use to materially anchor our ongoing conversations about modernity, power, and release, about race, class, gender, and globalization, about a whole lot of things. Getting to the hotel—and getting to that moment of realization at the ZaZa—took us a year or two of back-and-forth in the off hours. Sitting down that day, ticking off on our fingers those points of shared concern, we finally got it; we simply looked around and recognized that we were surrounded by a weird, fascinating material object, with its own culture and politics, an object that could capture all of these dynamic points. A waitress brought us coffee with a flourish, and a small clutch of brown sugar nuggets appeared on the table, with a small silver spoon. Why not, we thought, try to write about all of that? Continue Reading Caroline Field Levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl: A Third Way

Categories American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers
April 23, 2015

Lindsey A. Freeman: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulucene, Atomicocene

I’m going with Atomicocene because what has changed with this new time is not only humans and their activities, but specifically, and most dramatically, the role some humans in atomic states have played in the spreading of “artificial” radioactivity across the globe. Continue Reading Lindsey A. Freeman: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulucene, Atomicocene

Categories Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Sociology
April 21, 2015

Brian K. Feltman: The Complexities of Commemoration: Remembering the Great War

From the 888,246 poppies spilling from the Tower of London to the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s controversial ad based on the 1914 Christmas truce, the 100th anniversary of the Great War’s commencement has led to a great deal of centenary commemorations. In some cases, artists and activists from the former belligerent powers have come together to create commemorative artwork in the streets of major cities like London and Berlin in hopes of encouraging passersby to reflect on the significance of the events that unfolded a century ago. Despite widespread recognition of the need to observe the centenary and honor the war’s fallen, however, there has been little consensus over the most appropriate way to do so. Continue Reading Brian K. Feltman: The Complexities of Commemoration: Remembering the Great War

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Military History/Military Studies
April 20, 2015

Andrew J. Taylor: Exploring the End of Consensus

When a new school board majority elected by Wake County, North Carolina, residents in 2009 began to alter the jurisdiction’s long-standing diversity assignment policy, it drew attention from media outlets across the globe. The story conveyed by reporters was that the county—possibly still believed to be a sleepy southern backwater by many—was fractured in two by this decision, with conservative white suburban residents supportive of the change and a coalition of liberal white urbanites and African Americans in vocal opposition. Although Wake’s school board politics are ostensibly nonpartisan, the new majority had ridden into office on a strong Republican tide that existed as a mild swell in the county just fifteen years before. They instituted, according to stylized accounts, a revolution in policy of similar magnitude. Continue Reading Andrew J. Taylor: Exploring the End of Consensus

Categories Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers/North Carolina
April 16, 2015

David Gilbert: The Streaming Music Debate: Some Historical Context

It is certainly an interesting time for the creation, selling, and distribution of popular music (not to mention less-popular music, like jazz and classical, which encounter even more drastic dilemmas, as recently pointed out at Salon.com). Many of the artists taking a stand against the new status quo in recorded music allude to the history of music making in the United States, often referring back to earlier eras wherein musicians received unfair deals from recording companies and large majorities of performers struggled to make a living, even as a “top 1%” of musicians dominated sales and marketing. This look back to history makes sense. Continue Reading David Gilbert: The Streaming Music Debate: Some Historical Context

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Media Studies/Music
April 15, 2015

William Marvel on Edwin Stanton’s Eulogy for Lincoln: Now He Belongs to the Ages?

One of the more touching moments in the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination came when a surgeon announced that the president was dead, whereupon the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, broke the silence. “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton ostensibly observed, with a poetic spontaneity for which he was not known. Numerous people recount some form of the quote, but none of them recorded their memory of the phrase until a generation later, after it appeared in the multi-volume Lincoln biography by his former secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. Nicolay was not in Washington that night; Hay is often depicted at the bedside, although the room was not big enough to accommodate all who have subsequently been placed around it at the moment of the president’s death. Continue Reading William Marvel on Edwin Stanton’s Eulogy for Lincoln: Now He Belongs to the Ages?

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
April 14, 2015

Erin A. Smith: What Would Jesus Do?

“What Would Jesus Do About Measles?” asks Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in the opinion pages of the New York Times. Recalling the 1991 measles epidemic in Philadelphia (1400 people were infected; 9 children died), Offit points out that the outbreak was so virulent because two fundamentalist Christian churches that discouraged vaccination were at its epicenter. Public health officials brought the epidemic under control—in part—by getting a court order to vaccinate children over their parents’ protests. Citing the current measles outbreak and the approximately 30,000 children in the United States who are unvaccinated for religious reasons, Offit makes the case for eliminating the religious vaccination exemption. Moreover, Offit thinks Jesus—who stood up for children—would get them vaccinated against measles to keep them safe and to protect others. Continue Reading Erin A. Smith: What Would Jesus Do?

Categories Author blog entry/Christian Studies/Guest Bloggers/Literature/Religion
April 13, 2015

Cian T. McMahon: Immigrant Voices/Immigrant Debate

I knew there were ample primary sources out there on what the Irish thought about race and racial identity. And as I dug into them in the course of my own research, I realized how much these previous scholars had missed by not listening to the immigrants’ voices. I learned, for example, that the differences between whites (along Celt/Saxon lines) were just as important, in the minds of many Irish, as the differences between whites and people of color. Moreover, the Irish talked about identity in transnational terms; they thought of themselves as members of a global community, capable of being Irish whether at home or abroad. These conclusions complicated, I realized, what many scholars have taken for granted regarding immigrant identity in the nineteenth century. Continue Reading Cian T. McMahon: Immigrant Voices/Immigrant Debate

Categories Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers/History
April 8, 2015

Michel Hogue: The Metis and the Quiet Violence of the Forty-Ninth Parallel

“Thus has another good work been wrought in the interest of peace and good order, on our often threatened and imperiled border.” So reported the Helena Weekly Herald on the successful raid by the U.S. Army on a Plains Metis camp just south of the forty-ninth parallel in November 1871. “This colony of British Nomads,” the Montana newspaper explained, “had brought with them large quantities of liquor and ammunition to barter with the Indians for robes and peltries.” These circumstances were part of a disturbing series of reports from this stretch of the forty-ninth parallel through the 1860s and 1870s that suggested that Plains Metis traders from north of the border were encouraging Indigenous peoples in the American West “to make war upon the government of the United States and its citizens.” Reports such as these introduced the Metis to American officials and underscored just how important it was to suppress these cross-border networks if the United States was to secure its northern border. Continue Reading Michel Hogue: The Metis and the Quiet Violence of the Forty-Ninth Parallel

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
April 6, 2015

Stephen Cushman on a Tale of Two Surrenders

What about the second major surrender, that of Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston to U.S. general William T. Sherman, at a farmhouse between Hillsborough and Durham Station, North Carolina? There were several smaller, later surrenders, too, the last of them that of the C.S.S. Shenandoah by Captain James Waddell to a captain of the British Royal Navy in Liverpool on November 6, 1865. But the negotiations initiated by Johnston—in a letter written April 13 and received by Sherman April 14, which was also Good Friday and the same day John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater—led to the largest surrender of the war. Although more than 30,000 soldiers in the Army of Tennessee surrendered in North Carolina (fewer Army of Northern Virginia veterans were paroled at Appomattox), in fact the terms signed by Johnston and Sherman officially disbanded Confederate units fighting in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, putting the number of soldiers involved close to 90,000.

Why do most of us hear and know so much less about this surrender, the largest of the war? Continue Reading Stephen Cushman on a Tale of Two Surrenders

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/UNC Press Authors
April 1, 2015

Barbara W. Ellis: 6 Tips for Creating an Eco-Friendly Landscape

Whether you want to redesign your entire landscape, find a project for this weekend, or simply reduce overall outdoor maintenance, taking steps to make your garden greener, or more sustainable, may be the answer. Sustainable landscaping is a way to design and care for yards, gardens, and the larger landscape to create outdoor spaces that are attractive and healthy for humans, wildlife, pets, and the environment as a whole. Growing greener does not have to entail huge effort or become a life-altering process. While enthusiastic gardeners may be inspired to plant a wildflower meadow or create a native woodland garden, far simpler steps also can be beneficial. Continue Reading Barbara W. Ellis: 6 Tips for Creating an Eco-Friendly Landscape

Categories Author blog entry/Gardening/Guest Bloggers