Fri, 26 September 2014
Robert Townsend, a former deputy director of the American Historical Association and the current director of the Washington office of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the author of History’s Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940. Townsend demonstrates that, a hundred years ago, there was a broad group of people involved in the “historical enterprise” and integrated within the ranks of the American Historical Association. These included archivists, librarians, state historical society workers, high school history teachers, and university professors. By 1940, however, tenured research professors and their concerns came to dominate the American Historian Association and its activities, with the rest of the “babel” marginalized. In this interview, Townsend discussed the consequences of this split for how historians have participated in (or not participated in) debates related to school curricula, museum interpretation, and other public issues. We also discussed other difficult issues that currently face historians, including possible changes to graduate training and the costs and benefits of historical writing having become so super-specialized. |
Wed, 6 November 2013
Are climate change politics still stuck in the rut created by a famous 1970s bet about the consequences of ever-increasing population growth and resource use? Is "quality of life" a better focus than "survivability"? Paul Sabin, author of "The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon and Our Gamble Over Earth's Future," discusses these and other questions raised by his book. |
Thu, 24 October 2013
That's what Julia Ott, assistant professor in the history of capitalism at The New School, says. In a wide ranging discussion, she describes the not-at-all inevitable path to a broad-based securities market in the United States of the early 20th century. She comments on the tendency of financial reporting to ignore the fact that the development of the market in the U.S. has reflected and continues to reflect the deliberate selection of specific political choices. She also discusses the impact of economic crises in changing (or not changing) the understanding of, and attitudes towards, markets. |
Thu, 24 October 2013
A discussion with Kim Phillips-Fein, historian and author of a book that traces the conservative movement in the U.S. as it slowly regrouped in the aftermath of the passage of the New Deal. |
Mon, 1 July 2013
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Mon, 1 July 2013
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Mon, 1 July 2013
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