Think Piece

Renovating the American Revolution: The Most Important Stories Aren’t on Broadway

by guest contributor Eric Herschthal Timing is everything. Just when historians thought they were on the cusp of redefining the very meaning of the American Revolution—which is to say, now—along comes “Hamilton,” the musical. The general public, and not a… Continue Reading →

2016/06/06 2

Institutions and Fragments: “A Portrait of Antinous, In Two Parts” at the AIC

By guest contributor Luke A. Fidler The postwar art museum has increasingly served as a site of artistic intervention, whether through sanctioned forms of institutional critique (Fred Wilson’s pointed rearrangements of the collections at the Maryland Historical Society and the… Continue Reading →

2016/06/01 0

Censoring Early Modern Hebrew Texts: A Review of The Manfred R. Lehmann Memorial Master Workshop in the History of the Hebrew Book at the University of Pennsylvania

by Yitzchak Schwartz Each year, The Manfred R. Lehmann Memorial Master Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania brings together enthusiasts of the Hebrew book to study topics in Hebrew book history with leading scholars in the field. Housed at the Katz… Continue Reading →

2016/05/30 4

Conciliar Conversations

By Madeline McMahon Canons and decrees are like the conference proceedings of church councils—polished, authoritative, and reflective of conversations, formal and informal, that nevertheless are often elided in the process of editing. As a meeting place for theologians, historians, and… Continue Reading →

2016/05/25 2

Apes, Jews, and Others: a reading of Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy” and Bernard Malamud’s “God’s Grace”

by guest contributor Yaelle Frohlich On the surface, Franz Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy” (1917) and Bernard Malamud‘s last finished novel, God’s Grace (1982), appear quite different, but they each boast a striking similar feature: Both… Continue Reading →

2016/05/23 1

Intellectual History from Below

by Emily Rutherford When he came to give a lecture at Columbia University last month, Chris Hilliard was introduced as “an intellectual historian from below.” “From below” is a term to conjure with in modern British history: a field whose… Continue Reading →

2016/05/18 13

Mai-mai Sze and Irene Sharaff in Public and in Private

by contributing editor Erin McGuirl I’ve written about Mai-mai Sze on this blog three times, and in those pieces I have focused on her life as a reader and writer. I am neither a historian nor a biographer by training… Continue Reading →

2016/05/16 6

Shame, Memory, and the Politics of the Archive

by guest contributor Nicole Longpré During a research trip to the University of Leeds in the spring of 2014, I requested access to a selection of files from the papers of former Labour MP Merlyn Rees which are held by… Continue Reading →

2016/05/04 2

We Have Never Been Presentist: On Regimes of Historicity

by guest contributor Zoltán Boldizsár Simon It is great news that François Hartog’s Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time has finally come out in English. The original French edition dates back to 2003, and my encounter with the… Continue Reading →

2016/05/02 3

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