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Cover of Ned Blackhawk's book; a pole with feathers attached is next to the title, "The Rediscovery of America"

The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Native History

Over the past year, two prominent historians have invited readers to rethink the master narrative of US history.
Greek philosopher sitting at a desk and looking at a laptop.

History, Fast and Slow

Two new books model radically different ways of studying the past.
Drawing of George Washington Williams

George Washington Williams’ "History of the Negro Race in America" (1882–83)

A work of millennial scope by a self-taught African-American historian.
Andrea Casali: The Personification of History Writing on the Back of Time, early 1760s

Ego-Histories

The more that historians make their own experiences an explicit part of their work, the harder it will become to let the sources speak clearly.
Exhibit

The History of History

How historians and educators have written and taught about different eras of the American past.

The image displays two duplicate portraits of Adam Smith. One is upside down.

The Mysteries of Adam Smith

How to understand Adam Smith’s politics.
Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn, labeled "colored," in black and white.

Racism as Theory: A Historiography of White Supremacy Ideology

An overview of historical scholarship and socio-cultural developments in America to explain how racism became institutionalized against Black Americans.
Watercolor painting of enslaved people walking barefoot on a forced march, with white men on horseback at the front and back of the line.

Reparative Semantics: On Slavery and the Language of History

Scholarly accounts of slavery have been changing, but these correctives sometimes say more about historians than the historical subjects they're writing about.
Statue of Stonewall Jackson, on its side in slings and propped up by tires, in front of its graffiti-covered pedestal.

What the 1619 Project Got Wrong

It erases the fact that, for the first 70 years of its existence, the US was roiled by intense, escalating conflict over slavery – a conflict only resolved by civil war.
Red binder pulled from row of blue binders

Serendipity in the Archives

Or, a lost freedom story I found while looking for something else.

Why the History of the Vast Early America Matters Today

There is no American history without the histories of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. And this past has consequences today.
Painting of the Continental Congress

The Pursuit of Happiness: New Approaches to the American Revolutionary Past

A new way to think about the American Revolution.
107th U.S. Colored Troops posing for a picture

People, Not “Voices” or “Bodies,” Make History

We need to do far more than “give voice to the voiceless" to win justice.
Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Against the Consensus Approach to History

How not to learn about the American past.
"Join or Die" snake political cartoon.

The Iron Cage of Erasure: American Indian Sovereignty in Jill Lepore’s 'These Truths'

Lepore’s framework insists that the “self-evident” truths of the nation’s founding were anything but.
Artistic photo with american flags

Richard Hofstadter’s Discontents

Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?
A library reading room with two stories of open stacks, walkways and ornate railings.

Andrew Dickson White and America’s Unfinished (French) Revolution

How the Civil War-era historian effectively invented a distinctly American tradition of historiography.
Lithograph depicting police attacking African Americans in New Orleans, 1874

On Riots and Resistance

Exploring freedpeople’s struggle against police brutality during Reconstruction.

1619 and All That

The Editor of the American Historical Review weighs in on recent historiographical debates around the New York Times' 1619 Project.

The Battle to Rewrite Texas History

Supporters of traditional narratives are fighting to keep their grip on the public imagination.

Pushing the Dual Emancipation Thesis Beyond its Troublesome Origins

"Masterless Men" shows how poor whites benefited from slavery's end, but does not diminish the experiences of the enslaved.

Donald Trump and the 'Paranoid Style' in American (Intellectual) Politics

Revisiting Holfstadter's "paranoid style" in the era of Trump.

Why There Was a Civil War

Some issues aren’t amenable to deal making; some principles don’t lend themselves to compromise.

Why Haiti Should be at the Centre of the Age of Revolution

Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its climax in the Age of Revolution.
Portrait of Edward Gibbon

Bonfire of the Humanities

Historians are losing their audience, and searching for the next trend won’t win it back.
Ronald Reagan.

Conservatism: A State of the Field

Does recognizing the importance of conservatism in the twentieth century make us see the arc of American history in a new way?
A Public Health Services physician checking a woman immigrating into the United States for illness.

How the Irish Became Everything

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.
Cover of "A Great Disorder" by Richard Slotkin, depicting the outline of the United States made out of cracked stone, overlaid with the American flag.

American Mythology

Is the United States a prisoner of its own mythology?
Boxes in the University of Illinois Archives

Historians Killing History

The driving question of scholarship should be “what is the evidence for your argument?” Instead, it has become “whose side are you on?”
Empty speech bubbles emanating from people in an old house.

Popular History

What role do we really want history to be playing in our public life? And is the history we have actually doing that work?
partner

“In the White Interest”

Many founders expressed their hope that slavery would be abolished, while simultaneously exerting themselves to defend it.

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