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November 12, 2014

Doug Orr: The Profound African American Influence on Appalachian Music

It is generally known that the American banjo’s origins trace back to West Africa and a gourd-like instrument the gnomi, among other names. However, the plantations were something of an incubator for music of the African American slaves in a variety of forms: the fiddle, learned at the plantation house; the call-and-response work songs from the toil of the plantation fields; spirituals stemming from church worship—often clandestine services or camp meetings with hidden messages of freedom’s call; and the hush lullabies sung by mammies to their babies, and sung with irony to the children of the plantation overlords. Continue Reading Doug Orr: The Profound African American Influence on Appalachian Music

Categories African American History/Appalachian Studies/Author blog entry/Music/Southern Studies
November 5, 2014

Michael Barkun: Reverse Transparency in Post-9/11 America

Unlike the covert electronic infringements by the NSA, some other infringements are open and obvious—for example, security check-points at airports and government buildings, or surveillance cameras covering public spaces. These are examples of what I term “reverse transparency.” Traditionally, transparency has been a standard applied to organizations, such as corporations or governments, by which we require that their decisions be clear and open in order to permit accountability. Increasingly, however, under the pressure of homeland security concerns, this traditional conception has been, as it were, stood on its head. Continue Reading Michael Barkun: Reverse Transparency in Post-9/11 America

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Political Science/Public Policy
October 30, 2014

Mara Casey Tieken: 60 Years after Brown, Resegregation Is on the Rise

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that found racial segregation in schools unconstitutional. In large measure, the decision worked. Though it took many years—and the added weight of executive orders, U.S. troops, and the Civil Rights Act—slowly, the nation’s schools began to integrate. By the late 1980s, gains in desegregation were significant, particularly for black students. The South saw the largest gains: the year of the Brown decision, no black student was attending a majority white school, but, by 1988, 44 percent were. The South had become the most integrated region of the country. Today, though, we see a different reality: our nation’s schools are resegregating. Continue Reading Mara Casey Tieken: 60 Years after Brown, Resegregation Is on the Rise

Categories Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers
October 28, 2014

Lisa Wilson: Stepfamilies Are “Traditional” American Families

What is a traditional American family? In a recent article in AARP Magazine, “The New American Family: Meet 6 clans who embody our country’s changing ideas about what kinship is,” Brennan Jensen, citing high divorce rates, argues that modern families now include “a tumble of step- and half-siblings.” I applaud Jensen’s effort to complicate what we think of as a “real” American family, but I would suggest that the “new” American family is actually the “old” American family—at least in terms of the presence of stepfamilies. Continue Reading Lisa Wilson: Stepfamilies Are “Traditional” American Families

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers
October 23, 2014

Luther Adams: W. E. B. Du Bois’ One Charge

“Black-on-black crime” is not real. It only exists to suggest being black is the true crime, and to deflect attention away from the fact of ongoing inequality. What many have termed “black-on-black crime” tells us more about white supremacy, and the devaluation of black life, than it does about crime. Connecting crime and blackness is central to racial control, as is the link between guns and white supremacy. The true crime is that black lives have less value to society and to even to other black people. Continue Reading Luther Adams: W. E. B. Du Bois’ One Charge

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Video
October 16, 2014

Raúl Necochea López: When Historians’ Sources Get Demanding

The way in which bullfighters put themselves repeatedly on the path of a half-ton of rage, shifting at the last moment, is shocking. I am especially awed by the tribute of the bits of their own flesh left on those horns. It makes me wonder what we historians are increasingly giving up by finding our sources in air-conditioned rooms with lockers and vending machines, where the only tribute we pay is a cordial email to a helpful archivist, who then gets a credit in the standard acknowledgements page. Remotely accessible digitized collections are already making some of our work possible from the convenience of coffee shops with Wi-Fi. Continue Reading Raúl Necochea López: When Historians’ Sources Get Demanding

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Women's Studies
October 15, 2014

Edward E. Curtis IV: Teaching about Islam and the African Diaspora

These discoveries have changed the way I teach about Islam even at the introductory level. I now try to put Black people at the center of my course rather than on the margins of it (and by extension, on the margins of Islam). Continue Reading Edward E. Curtis IV: Teaching about Islam and the African Diaspora

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Islamic Studies/Religion
October 1, 2014

Nathaniel Cadle: Central American Refugees and the “Traditional” Immigrant Narrative

The recent debate over the exact status of the tens of thousands of Central American children attempting to cross the U.S. border reminds us that there is often a very fine line dividing an immigrant from a refugee. It turns out that, according to a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, a majority of Americans—regardless of age or political or religious affiliation—view these children as refugees rather than as illegal immigrants. Of course, the term “refugee” designates a special legal status that carries a wide range of political and bureaucratic implications. Continue Reading Nathaniel Cadle: Central American Refugees and the “Traditional” Immigrant Narrative

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies
September 30, 2014

Corinne T. Field: Old Age was Once a Feminist Issue

Winning respect for female elders was an issue that cut across the color line separating black and white feminists in nineteenth-century America. The white transcendentalist Margaret Fuller urged women to cast aside their fear of becoming “old maids” and cultivate talents rather than youthful beauty. Sharing the same goal, the black abolitionist Frances Harper crafted poetry and fiction centered on a new type of heroine, one “not vainly striving to keep her appearance of girlishness,” who dedicated herself to growing old in the service of antislavery and women’s rights. Continue Reading Corinne T. Field: Old Age was Once a Feminist Issue

Categories Author blog entry/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Women's Studies
September 29, 2014

Fiona Ritchie: Living Is Collecting

When NPR first partnered with me in presenting The Thistle & Shamrock®, we talked about using my radio show to open a doorway into a world of evolving Celtic music traditions for public radio listeners. I could never have imagined how far that door would swing open my way, too, helping inspire my search for the depth of connection that underpins our migration story in Wayfaring Strangers. Continue Reading Fiona Ritchie: Living Is Collecting

Categories Appalachian Studies/Author blog entry/Music/Southern Studies
September 15, 2014

Chantal Norrgard: Wisconsin Mining Legislation and the Fallacy of Jobs vs. Treaty Rights

Since the legislation was first introduced in 2011, local community members, environmental activists, and Ojibwe Bands from throughout the region have fiercely opposed it. The Bad River Band asserts that the legislation violates their rights to hunt, fish, and gather in ceded territory reserved in treaties with the United States in 1837 and 1842 and that the state has failed to consult with them on the bill. They are currently seeking federal redress. However, Governor Walker and Wisconsin Republican legislators have disregarded this opposition and have received $15 million from mining executives and supporters. Continue Reading Chantal Norrgard: Wisconsin Mining Legislation and the Fallacy of Jobs vs. Treaty Rights

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
September 2, 2014

Claude Andrew Clegg III: Elijah Muhammad, Then and Now

Our America is a product of Muhammad’s America and to know our times is to appreciate the era in which he lived. Continue Reading Claude Andrew Clegg III: Elijah Muhammad, Then and Now

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/History/Islamic Studies/Religion
August 28, 2014

Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Putin is pushing a new nationalist conservatism with a strong strain of anti-Americanism, promoting a vision of the United States as the primary conspirator pulling strings to foster international chaos and regime change.

As former Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul noted recently in the New Yorker, “Putin has a theory of American power that has some empirical basis.” The CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the United States bombed Belgrade to remove a dictator, and there is, of course, Iraq. However, a close examination of American policy toward Poland—the country the United States pushed hardest to break from the Soviet sphere in the 1980s—brings to the fore just how far the Russian president’s views are removed from reality. The United States is not nearly the revolutionary mastermind Putin seems to think it is. Continue Reading Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/European History/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science
August 20, 2014

Chantal Norrgard: The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission: Tribal Sovereignty in Action

Sovereignty is a contested term in Native American and Indigenous Studies, but as political scientist David Wilkins has asserted, tribal sovereignty is not the same as Western concepts of sovereignty. It exists as a “spiritual, moral, and cultural force” that propels a tribal community towards political economic and cultural integrity and “mature relationships” with itself, with other groups, and with the environment. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) exemplifies this definition and shows how tribal sovereignty applies to the complex process of decolonization among Lake Superior Ojibwe. Continue Reading Chantal Norrgard: The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission: Tribal Sovereignty in Action

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
August 11, 2014

Luther Adams: Claiming the South as Home: African Americans and Southern Identity

Claiming the South as Home was and still is a call to action and for reparations, but it is also an expression of black southern identity. Continue Reading Luther Adams: Claiming the South as Home: African Americans and Southern Identity

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Southern Studies
August 4, 2014

Sarah S. Elkind: Air Pollution and Prosperity

I was recently interviewed for a series of radio essays called “We Used to Be China,” on China’s air pollution, by Sarah Gardner at American Public Radio’s Marketplace. These stories got me thinking about China’s air pollution problem, and about Marketplace’s premise. Did we, the United States, used to be China? In what ways? Continue Reading Sarah S. Elkind: Air Pollution and Prosperity

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers
July 21, 2014

Raúl Necochea López: Therapeutic Abortion Finally Regulated in Peru after Being Legal (Kinda) for 90 Years

Article 163 of the Penal Code defined therapeutic abortions as those demanded by women and performed by clinicians, in consultation with a committee of their peers, “if there is no other way to save a mother’s life or avoid a permanent and severe lesion in her.” However, Peruvian authorities at the time did not answer crucial questions to make the law applicable, such as which lesions counted as permanent and severe, or what interventions should be used to cause an abortion, or how far into a pregnancy an abortion could be provoked. Continue Reading Raúl Necochea López: Therapeutic Abortion Finally Regulated in Peru after Being Legal (Kinda) for 90 Years

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Women's Studies
July 8, 2014

Marc Stein: Sotomayor v. Roberts: Race, Affirmative Action, and Impatience

When I teach students about the history of constitutional law, I usually focus on the substantive legal arguments in Supreme Court decisions, but sometimes I encourage my students to focus on the tone, the emotion, the affect. I try to show my students that this can help us understand what is really going on in these decisions and it can help us consider the underlying issues and the political stakes. Continue Reading Marc Stein: Sotomayor v. Roberts: Race, Affirmative Action, and Impatience

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Law / Legal History
May 29, 2014

William A. Blair on the Consequences of Silence during the Civil War

Americans have a high regard for free speech, but should we have the same concern for the protection of silence? Should saying nothing or doing nothing open one to military arrest? What if a president has gone on record as advocating such a policy? This may sound like a ridiculous proposition, given our system of rights embedded in the Constitution. But it is not a hypothetical statement: this scenario faced northerners, border state loyalists, and especially Confederates in occupied zones during the U.S. Civil War. Saying nothing and doing nothing did bring the U.S. Army to one’s door. Continue Reading William A. Blair on the Consequences of Silence during the Civil War

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/Politics
May 27, 2014

Sonia Song-Ha Lee: Black-Puerto Rican Coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement

Puerto Ricans played a pivotal role in the building of the civil rights movement in New York City—one of the less-heralded but still vital sites of movement. Continue Reading Sonia Song-Ha Lee: Black-Puerto Rican Coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies