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December 18, 2013

Jacqueline E. Whitt: Merry Chrismahanukwanzakah from Uncle Sam

The difference between the two positions is stark—but the key to understanding the divergence rests in recognizing the different assumptions and interpretations of the First Amendment. For groups such as the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the establishment clause is at the heart of the argument. And for [Tony] Perkins and many other religious groups and individuals, the free exercise clause is central to the question. The problem, of course, is that the First Amendment doesn’t give primacy to one clause over the other. They are co-equal and held in tension. Continue Reading Jacqueline E. Whitt: Merry Chrismahanukwanzakah from Uncle Sam

Categories American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Military Studies/Religion
December 17, 2013

Rebekah E. Pite: A Televised Cooking Segment as Historical Source: Dona Petrona’s Pan Dulce de Navidad

No one was more successful in encouraging women’s domestic dedication and home cooking than Doña Petrona C. de Gandulfo, Argentina’s leading culinary celebrity during most of the twentieth century. And, indeed, Pan Dulce de Navidad was her most famous recipe. As the holiday season drew close, she would show her fans how to make this sweet bread step by step on television, as we can see in these two videos from the mid 1960s (watch Part 1 and Part 2 on YouTube). Such footage may not at first glance appear to be a valuable historical source, but it provides us rare insight into how changing gender expectations, economic dynamics, and food-related practices were shaping Argentines’ daily lives. Continue Reading Rebekah E. Pite: A Televised Cooking Segment as Historical Source: Dona Petrona’s Pan Dulce de Navidad

Categories Author blog entry/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Recipes/Women's Studies
December 4, 2013

Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Eager to discuss African American participation in the Civil War, we are nonetheless troubled by the aura of Confederate nostalgia surrounding the ceremony, as well as the news coverage that (at least in the Charlotte-area press) seemed intent on calling the ten men Confederate soldiers or veterans. Continue Reading Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina
November 26, 2013

Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Everything you have heard about the film 12 Years a Slave is true; it is exceptionally well acted, gorgeously filmed, and brutally honest about antebellum slavery. There are moments that are extremely difficult to watch and this is as it should be, leaving audiences stunned into numbness. Film critics and historians alike have praised it as a watershed in the depiction of slavery in American cinema, and this is certainly true. Nevertheless, the film demonstrates that Hollywood has not yet fully caught up with current interpretations of slave life in the antebellum South. Continue Reading Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Categories African American History/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Film/Guest Bloggers/History
November 21, 2013

Kathryn Shively Meier: Civil War Soldier Trauma in Unexpected Places

Soldiers on both sides pegged environmental circumstances as some of the most serious stressors of the war. Privates through non-commissioned officers, common soldiers rarely had traveled far from home before deploying. That meant the vast majority of them were transported to foreign environments that appeared extremely threatening based on popular notions of disease causation. Lacking conceptions of germ theory or insect-borne illness (theories developed in the 1870s and 80s respectively), mid-century Americans widely believed that a sudden change of location or weather and the air, water, and terrain of certain locales (particularly those of the South) caused life-threatening diseases, such as dysentery, malaria, and typhoid. It was clear to soldiers that disease claimed far more mortalities than combat; indeed, two-thirds of soldier deaths by war’s end would be from sickness rather than wounds. Nature appeared to be the soldiers’ fiercest enemy. Continue Reading Kathryn Shively Meier: Civil War Soldier Trauma in Unexpected Places

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/History/Military History/Military Studies
November 11, 2013

Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

In my opinion, the most interesting topic for discussion is not that Cubans are finally embracing private enterprise, but rather that the new legislation will surely change the existing face of private enterprise on the island. Talk to Cubans about the new business, property, and internet reform measures and you are less likely to hear them marveling at the wonders of capitalism than to hear them debate the variety of state-imposed taxes that often leave them with only a few CUC (Cuban Convertible Pesos that carry a 1:1 exchange rate with the U.S. dollar) at the end of each month. Continue Reading Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

Categories Author blog entry/Cuba/Economics/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
November 8, 2013

Alex Lubin: Exhuming Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat has meant many things to many people over the course of his life. To some he is a freedom fighter, and throughout the world he is often depicted in posters alongside Che Guevara. To others he is a terrorist. To the Nobel Prize Committee he is a peace-maker. Arafat has had many lives, and his reputation has been exhumed numerous times over his life and now, after his death.

What often gets overlooked about Arafat and the PLO is the impact he and his movement had on a global third-world movement in general, and on the Black freedom movement in particular. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Exhuming Yasser Arafat

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Middle Eastern Studies/Politics
November 7, 2013

Jonathan Scott Holloway: Sincere Fictions, Real Horrors, and the Tourism Trade

Goree Island is not the only site of slave trade remembrance on the African coast. Further south, in Ghana, there are two prominent warehouses, most often referred to as the slave castles at Cape Coast and Elmina, that are part of a thriving tourism trade catering mainly to black American travelers, many of whom are on roots journeys to “return home.” Just as Post reporter Fisher is right for asking critical questions related to Obama’s photo op at Goree Island, we can profit from asking challenging questions about a tourist trade that offers an uncomplicated reconciliation and welcome home at the same time that it traffics in horror. Continue Reading Jonathan Scott Holloway: Sincere Fictions, Real Horrors, and the Tourism Trade

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
October 29, 2013

Sarah Caroline Thuesen: The North Carolina NAACP: 80 Years at the Forefront of Struggles for Equality

It is fitting that in this 80th anniversary year of the 1933 rally the North Carolina NAACP is once again in the headlines, this time for its leading role in the recent Moral Monday protests at the state legislature. Continue Reading Sarah Caroline Thuesen: The North Carolina NAACP: 80 Years at the Forefront of Struggles for Equality

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Current Events/Education/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Politics
October 23, 2013

Jaime Amanda Martinez: Zeb Vance, Ken Cuccinelli, and Chris Christie: Governors as Bellwethers

The elections in Virginia and New Jersey have been touted as indicators of where the Republican Party, and indeed the entire country, will head in 2014 and beyond. The North Carolina governor’s race in 1864 served a similar role. Though often overshadowed in discussions of Civil War politics by the U.S. presidential election of 1864, the North Carolina race, which pitted incumbent Zebulon Baird Vance against newspaper editor William W. Holden, tells an equally important story about shifting political winds. Continue Reading Jaime Amanda Martinez: Zeb Vance, Ken Cuccinelli, and Chris Christie: Governors as Bellwethers

Categories African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Politics
October 16, 2013

Jonathan Scott Holloway: Where Does a Historian Find the Truth?

I still rely on and value deeply these brick-and-mortar archives, but my research in Jim Crow Wisdom has taught me to value the archive of the imagination as well. Like any archive, the imagination is a place that is fundamentally about assemblage: a mixture of our best efforts to remember the past accurately, the eroding effects of time, and a desire for narrative clarity and poignancy. Relying on the imagination for its archival properties is central to this book and helps us develop a richer sense of memory and of history. Continue Reading Jonathan Scott Holloway: Where Does a Historian Find the Truth?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
October 15, 2013

Lawrence S. Earley: The Stories I Heard

Milan Lewis of Atlantic said that he had joined the Navy during the Second World War. “I didn’t go in because I was patriotic,” he said. “I went in because I was digging clams for 40 cents a bushel, and I thought the Navy would be better, which was a mistake. The clamming was better.” Continue Reading Lawrence S. Earley: The Stories I Heard

Categories Art / Architecture/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/North Carolina/Photography
October 7, 2013

Sandra A. Gutierrez: A Tropical Vacation on a Stick

One of the biggest misconceptions I find about Latin American food is that it’s complicated to make—but nothing could be further from the truth. I give you plenty of examples of no fuss, no muss recipes that require only basic skills in the kitchen but produce magical and fun flavors. Such is the case of these scrumptious chocolate-covered bananas, or Chocobananos, that Latin American kids have been enjoying for decades. Continue Reading Sandra A. Gutierrez: A Tropical Vacation on a Stick

Categories Author blog entry/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/Recipes
October 4, 2013

Taylor Mathis: Tailgating: The Social Events of the Fall

If you have never been to a tailgate in the South, you may not realize what goes into it. The event is much more than people standing in a parking lot before a football game. These events are a chance to reunite with old college friends, have a family reunion, and share great food and drink with those that you love. The common thread is that everyone there has a connection to that campus and wants to be with the ones they love to support their team. Continue Reading Taylor Mathis: Tailgating: The Social Events of the Fall

Categories Author blog entry/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers
October 2, 2013

David T. Gleeson: Irish Confederates and the Meaning of American Nationalism

As an immigrant, something I’m familiar with myself, one’s sense of identity is heightened by the immigration experience. In your new country, even when your language is the same as the natives, you suddenly you have an “accent,” your religion and culture are different, and you must adapt to new social and political realities. Immigrants then give us valuable insights, not only into their own changing identity, but also that of the host country. Irish immigrants in the South had to become Americans and Confederates. They had to negotiate the cultural traits they brought from Ireland with the demands of loyalty to their new home. And, it was this Irish cultural baggage which played the key role in binding them to the United States and the Confederacy Continue Reading David T. Gleeson: Irish Confederates and the Meaning of American Nationalism

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/European History/Guest Bloggers/History
September 23, 2013

Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr.: Out of Many, Uno

At 10% of the U.S. electorate, Latino voters overwhelmingly (more than 70%) cast their ballots for the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012. Those numbers shed light on how Obama became the first U.S. President elected while losing the “white vote”, as they also signal the changing composition of the 21st-century United States. Continue Reading Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr.: Out of Many, Uno

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies/Politics
September 19, 2013

Susan Ware: The Ongoing Battle of the Sexes

The footage shows not a player who was intentionally tanking a match, but one who was consistently and masterfully outplayed by a superior opponent, which Riggs admitted at the time and maintained right up until his death in 1995. The unsupported ESPN allegations have no place in sporting history. Continue Reading Susan Ware: The Ongoing Battle of the Sexes

Categories Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Sports/Video/Women's Studies
September 18, 2013

Tracy K’Meyer: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights in Schools

The modern civil rights movement fought for racial equality and to create an interracial “beloved community.” People in the movement did not make a distinction between action in the schools, the voting booth, or the streets toward those goals. Education was another arena for fighting racism and securing equal resources and opportunity. Seeing school desegregation as an integral part of the civil rights movement reminds us that an equal education is a basic human right that has been fought for but not yet achieved, and that overcoming racism in the classroom as in the community remains a moral imperative. For many local people, like Suzy Post, in Louisville and Jefferson County, the civil rights movement continues because the struggle to protect desegregation and through it achieve educational equity and better human understanding has not yet been won. Continue Reading Tracy K’Meyer: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights in Schools

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Education/Guest Bloggers/History
September 11, 2013

David T. Gleeson: Immigrants and American Wars: The Irish Confederate Experience

Rather than becoming southern “under fire,” they became southern by misremembering, reimagining, and reinterpreting the real experience of being under fire. Continue Reading David T. Gleeson: Immigrants and American Wars: The Irish Confederate Experience

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/European History/Guest Bloggers/History