Category Archives: writing
Past Tense April 21: The Journalist as Historian
Please join us for our last event of the academic year on Thursday, April 21, 7:00pm, in the Huntington Library’s Overseers’ Room, for: “The Journalist as Historian” Miriam Pawel spent twenty-five years working for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. She … Continue reading
Past Tense at the Huntington Library: Fall and Winter Schedule
In collaboration with the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the USC-Huntington Institute on California and the West, we are happy to announce the fall and winter schedule for the Past Tense seminar. These gatherings focus on the craft of … Continue reading
A Room of One’s Own…
For the first time ever, I have an office of my own. One that’s not shared with numerous other grad students or that I must vacate when the library closes. But now the question looms: what’s the best working environment? … Continue reading
Sing Your History
I have been riding around with lonely cowboys, energetic flirts, and cynical Brits. I live in Los Angeles now, and so there is always another opportunity to get in your car. Thankfully, there is also a rich mix of radio … Continue reading
Martha Sandweiss’s Passing Strange: Excellent History at the Edge of Knowability
The first thing to know about Martha Sandweiss’s Passing Strange is that it is gripping. When I first cracked it open, in a Seattle hotel room last March, I found myself one hundred pages in before checking the time. This … Continue reading
OAH Report: Early-Republic Crowdsourcing and Communal Email
What can early American communication networks tell us about the Internet? An OAH 2010 panel recap. Continue reading
Event: Peter Hessler in Conversation with Ken Pomeranz, Feb 16 at UC Irvine
New Yorker writer Peter Hessler (author of the books River Town, Oracle Bones, and the about to be released Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory) will be on campus February 16 to engage in a public … Continue reading
Allan Megill and rigorous history in an age of fragmentation
Allan Megill’s Historical Knowledge, Historical Error should be required reading for historians. This collection of essays grapples with many of the profession’s current obsessions – memory, identity, narrative, objectivity, grand narrative, cultural history, counterfactuals, epistemology – in an open-hearted yet … Continue reading
Imagining the Future of History — Are you Isms or Ism-free?
AHA session recap: Imagining the Future of History — Are you Isms or Ism-free? This semester I am offering a graduate course on “The Writing of History” (syllabus here). I’ll talk more about my choices and its progress over the … Continue reading
Haunted by the Strangling Angel (of History)
Cross-posted from History Compass Exchanges I’m a historian because I’m haunted. The words and names from the archives surface in my thoughts and dreams…as I immerse myself in their world, their stories become mine. Am I like a clan storyteller, … Continue reading
