Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
Drawing of a Caribbean sugar plantation.

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas

A tribal collaborative project that seeks to understand settler colonialism and its legacies through the lens of Indigenous enslavement and unfreedom.
Map of Phillips Radio by Walter Eckhard (1935).

The Spirit of Radio

Explore some new and old radio maps in our collection, and learn a bit about the history of radio communications.
Image of Sergeant Pete Thibodeau during the War on Terror.

The Sum of All Beards

How did facial hair win American men’s hearts and minds? Thank the War on Terror.
Image of a young girl using an iPhone.

What Makes a Millennial?

The defining boundaries and problematic categorizations carried by our culture's treatment of the label "millennial."
President Clinton pursing his lips, while Newt Gingrich looks at him from behind.
partner

Midterm Elections: How 1994 Midterms Set Off an Era of Divisive Politics

Economic and social issues with roots in the 1994 midterms are still being debated today.
Illustration of a Christian church cracking into two pieces.

A Religious Movement Divided Against Itself (Probably) Cannot Stand

Liberal Protestants built a global elite in the 20th century. Its fracturing holds a caution for evangelicals today.
Black-and-white photograph of black students sitting in a classroom at the Tuskegee Institute.

The Complicity of the Textbooks

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.
Digital illustration of a wagon filled with newspapers.

Fear in the Heartland

How the case of the kidnapped paperboys accelerated the “stranger danger” panic of the 1980s.
Images of girls in a factory

Layered Lives

Rhetoric and representation in the Southern Life History Project.
Photograph of a woman pushing a shopping cart down a supermarket aisle.

The Secret Anti-Socialist History of Supermarkets

The emergence of the supermarket was used as a key piece of anti-communist propaganda early in the twentieth century against the alternative of grocery co-ops.
A 1947 advertisement for the air conditioner featuring two women looking bemusedly at a new window unit.

The Unexpected History of the Air Conditioner

The invention was once received with chilly skepticism but has become a fixture of American life.
Drawings of protest sign reading "Workers of the world unite" with an asterisk, and another smaller one reading "Not You."

Redefining the Working Class

The diminished status of the non-white working class is not a matter of accident, but of design.
Picture of the factories that were placed on the St. Lawrence River.

How US Corporations Poisoned This Indigenous Community

These invisible chemicals changed the Mohawk way of life. They’re probably already in you, too.
Black and white photo of Inez Milholland leading the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on a white horse, Washington, D.C

What We Want Is to Start a Revolution

Formed in 1912 for “women who did things—and did them openly,” the Heterodoxy Club laid the groundwork for a century of American feminism.
Four new Army brassiere designs modeled by servicewomen.
partner

A New Bra Reveals That the Military is Moving Toward Gender Equality

Women’s military uniforms were once about making soldiers look feminine. Now they’re about enhancing performance.
Birds-eye view map of Johnstown, New York.

The Stories We Give Ourselves

I wish I’d asked my grandfather more questions.
Black and white photo of World War II soldiers pointing at a Malaria poster urging soldiers to keep their skin covered.

How a Malaria Scare at the Start of World War II Gave Rise to the CDC

The Office of Malaria Control in War Areas sought to curb malaria transmission in the United States.
Headshot illustration of Angela Davis

‘Hell, Yes, We Are Subversive’

For all her influence as an activist, intellectual, and writer, Angela Davis has not always been taken as seriously as her peers. Why not?
Travels through Virginia. From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White. Depicting American Indians dancing.

The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English

In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for "True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia," the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
Illustration of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writing.

The American Beginning

The dark side of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer."
Tintype photograph of Omar Ibn Said.

Educated and Enslaved

The journey of Omar Ibn Said.
Louis Farrakhan walking with group

The Charmer

Louis Farrakhan and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Blackfoot Chief, Mountain Chief making phonographic record at Smithsonian, February 9, 1916.

Eavesdropping on History

By all accounts, young Bill Owens was a natural song-catcher, trawling across Texas in the 1930s, the golden era of American field recording.
The river between modern-day El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, CH from the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey

The River That Became a Warzone

The US-Mexico border wall is disrupting and destroying the lives of a united binational community.
Sparkle Moore performing with guitar

New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years.
A picture of a “water detail,” reportedly taken in May, 1901, in Sual, the Philippines. A man is holding another down while a third holds the captive's mouth open with a stick and pours water into it.

The Water Cure

Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago.
A vacant home surrounded by a chain link fence is seen in Los Angeles, February 16, 2010.

Why Obama-Era Economists Are So Mad About Student Debt Relief

It exposes their failed mortgage debt relief policies after the Great Recession.
Photograph of Jack Kerouac looking into a shop window, by Allen Ginsberg.

Drive, Jack Kerouac Wrote

"On the Road" is a sad and somewhat self-consciously lyrical story about loneliness, insecurity, and failure. It’s also a story about guys who want to be with other guys.
Governor Ronald Reagan speaking to an audience about the higher education system.

The Origin of Student Debt

In 1970 Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.
Photograph of a soldier using a telephone in the field.

A History of Wire-Tapping

Meyer Berger’s 1938 look at the technology, history, and culture of eavesdropping, from the wiretapping of Dutch Schulz to the invention of the Speak-O-Phone.
Painting of a stylized explosion and the silhouettes of African American soldiers.

A Deadly World War II Explosion Sparked Black Soldiers to Fight for Equal Treatment

After the deadliest home-front disaster of the war, African Americans throughout the military took action to transform the nation's armed forces.
Advertisement for a gold dredging machine from a 1920's magazine.

The Huckster Ads of Early “Popular Mechanics”

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.
Actor Tom Hanks and President George W. Bush stand on stage at the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004.

Destructive Myths

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.
Black and white sketch of the front of the Mississippi State asylum.

Ghosts are Scary, Disabled People are Not: The Troubling Rise of the Haunted Asylum

Tourist-driven curiosity about the so-called "haunted asylum" has led many to overlook the real people who once were institutionalized within these hospitals.
Paul Robeson in 1960, London, performing on stage in front of a crowd.

Black King of Songs

His communism brought the great American singer Paul Robeson trouble in the US, but helped make him a hero in China.
Map showing allotments to tribal citizens.

Sovereignty Is Not So Fragile

McGirt v. Oklahoma and the failure of denationalization.
US Soldiers in armored cars in Iraq.

Our Invasions

If we’re never going to hold U.S. war criminals accountable, what moral credibility do we have when we condemn Russia and others?
A group of anti-gay activists protests a parade during a Pride event in support of LGBTQ rights in Seoul on July 16.
partner

The White Christian Understanding of the U.S. Has a Global History

Missionaries spread the idea that Christianity accounts for American success throughout the world.
Cartoon silhouettes of elongated business people in suits

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood

The mass defection of CEOs of some of the nation’s most powerful corporations from President Trump’s now-defunct Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.
Panel of medieval-era paintings depicting humans and animals.

When Did Racism Begin?

The history of race has animated a highly contentious, sometimes fractious debate among scholars.
Drawing of enslaved persons harvesting sugarcane.

Wesley, Whitefield, and a Gospel That Disrupts

Two preachers who shaped American Christianity diverged sharply on whether to protest or exploit slavery, with consequences that persist today.
“The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire,” by Thomas Cole (1835-36), depicting Greek classical style buildings and opulence.

History Is Always About Politics

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.
Photos of various instances of climate change's effects such as wildfires and hurricanes.

Climate Change Is Destroying American History

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

How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools

At a time when the US was divided on questions of gender, Alice de Rivera decided that she was fed up with her lousy high school.
Malcolm X sitting on a couch

Remembering Malcolm X: Rare Interviews and Audio

On the religion, segregation, the civil rights movement, violence, and hypocrisy.
Photograph of protesters at the 1963 March on Washington. Pictured are black and white protesters holding signs with messages about racial and economic justice.

You’ve Been Lied to About the 1963 March on Washington

It’s popularly remembered as a moderate demonstration. In fact, it was the culmination of a mass, working-class movement against racial and economic injustice.
Formal portrait photo of Harland Bartholomew in suit and tie

One Man Zoned Huge Swaths of Our Region for Sprawl, Cars, and Exclusion

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.
Black and white photo of communists marching in front of the White House to demand the release of the Scottsboro Boys.

The Civil Rights Movement Was Radical to Its Core

The Civil Rights Movement was a radical struggle against Jim Crow tyranny whose early foot soldiers were Communists and labor militants.
School lunch comprised of a hamburger, brussel sprouts, cantaloupe, potatoes, and milk.
partner

The Failed Promise of Free, Universal School Lunch

Masks and social distancing are largely gone, but just as consequentially, a less visible pandemic intervention is ending: universally free school meals.
The Tower of Babel painting by Pieter Bruegel The Elder

Identity Crisis

It’s only by acknowledging the roots of identity politics in the emancipatory movements of the past that we can begin the work of formulating an alternative.
Filter by:

Categories

Select content type

Time