Memory

American artists were instrumental in propagating the false narrative of Thanksgiving, a deliberate erasure of violence against Indigenous peoples.

Historians should reject nationalism and help readers to avoid its dangers.

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?

Perhaps no Native American is more admired for military acumen than the Lakota leader. But is that how he wanted to be remembered?

Inside the strife set off by an essay from the president of the American Historical Association.

Telling a spooky story around a campfire—or in a dorm room—may be the best way to keep a local legend alive.

Viewed as public memory, the Crisis has an extraordinarily useful function today: a nuclear warning for the future.

On “all wars” memorials.

A review of "C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian."

When a university denied its legacy, students and faculty stepped in to do the research.

A new documentary explores the origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott — with lessons on how we see movements.

How best to tell the story of oppressed peoples? By chronicling the hardships they’ve faced? Or by highlighting their triumphs over adversity?

Treating the practice of land acknowledgment seriously requires more than just getting the names right.

Right and left are united in a vulgar form of historicism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.

A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.

The author confronts the daunting task of writing about her childhood memory, both as a memoirist and a historian.

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.

“It’s important to study history if you want to be an intelligent citizen in a democracy.”

The Dahomey had fierce female fighters. They also sold people overseas.

There are nearly 100 towns named "Troy."

Responding to a controversial recent critique of "presentism," two historians make the case that history and politics have always been deeply interwoven.

Ken Burns’ account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering.

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.

How James Baldwin speaks to lethal myths of white innocence—and why his work belongs in public-school classrooms.

Calls for Covid-19 memorials echo Pericles' Athenian moratorium, prompting reflection on the appropriateness of commemoration for ongoing crises.

As climate change increases the severity of extreme weather events, the nation’s legacy is at risk.

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.