Alasdair MacIntyre on Narrative, History, and the Unity of a Life [2]
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. Hamlet,...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Kings? January 15, April 4, and the Legacy of MLK [8]
Thinking about the 46th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination of April 4, 1968, I found myself considering which MLK we remember when we talk about his murder. For years, I’ve...
View ArticleFatalism and the Age of Fracture [2]
Last week I blogged about a little experiment I performed on the annals of the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History. Inspired by the word’s prominent occurrence in a debate...
View ArticleSummer Plans for Intellectual Historians [5]
Today I’ll take a step back from my series of posts on building an intellectual history of the South from 1965 until the 1990s—but not too much of a step. Instead, considering that for many of us the...
View ArticleThe 1983 March on Washington and the Age of Reagan [8]
Recently Ben Alpers asked some pertinent questions about the study, or lack thereof, of Roots by historians seeking to understand the 1970s. Thinking back to that era also has me curious, but about a...
View ArticleAge of Fracture v. Age of Culture Wars [43]
Anyone who writes about recent US history, particularly recent US intellectual history, must grapple with Daniel Rodgers’s award-winning book, Age of Fracture. Longtime readers of this blog are well...
View ArticleThe Long Mid-Century [3]
I’ve been working on 1976 and the Bicentennial of the American Revolution this semester. Recently, I ran into this 1976 episode of PBS’s The Open Mind, featuring host Richard Heffner interviewing the...
View ArticleWaiting For My Man [2]
This is the second of two excellent reviews on the recent Mark Greif book, The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973. Read the other review by Professor Patrick Redding...
View ArticleFindings & Arguments [6]
I recently read Mical Raz’s excellent new book, What’s Wrong with the Poor?, which Trevor Burrows reviewed at this blog a few months ago. One of the many aspects of Raz’s book that strikes me as...
View ArticleWarp Speed: The Media and Democratized Ignorance [2]
In my last post on “democratized anti-knowledge,” I began with a discussion a BBC article that featured the work of Robert Proctor. In the process I covered Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik Conway’s Merchants...
View ArticleReconsidering Jesse Jackson: The Caricature, The Person, The Politician – Part 2
Today’s post is the second in a four-part argument about the history and significance of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., as a political activist and thinker. The first installment is here. My thesis...
View ArticleReconsidering Jesse Jackson: The Caricature, The Person, The Politician – Part 3
Today’s post is the third in a four-part argument about the history and significance of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., as a political activist and thinker. The first two installments are here and...
View ArticleHow Does It Feel To Still Be A Problem?
This week was a microcosm of modern African American history. When I wrote this, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) just opened its doors in Washington, D.C. A...
View ArticleThe Idea of ‘Liberation’ in Modern African American Intellectual History
Spurred on by L.D. Burnett’s fantastic post yesterday on primary sources and 1970s feminist books (seriously, check it out now if you haven’t already done so), I looked back towards some of the books...
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