This is Not About Cinnamon Toast
A discussion of the importance and possibilities of storytelling, oral history and personal memories.
Category Archives: American History
Can Facebook Get You Fired?
A discussion of recent labour board decisions in Canada and the United States on Facebook firings.
The Sound of History
http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/americanradioworks/podcast/arw_4_3_john_biewen.mp3?_kip_ipx=972215519-1283174810Podcast: Play in new window | Download A few months ago the American Radio Works posted a very interesting podcast on the art of making radio documentaries. The podcast included a live presentation given by Stephen Smith and John Biewen about a new book Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound. While the whole discussion is very interesting, the second… Read more »
Reflection: 9/11
Today I write this on 12 September 2010, one day after 11 September 2010, and 9 years after 11 September 2001. In the midst of my first year of living in New York City, this date has caused me special occasion to pause and to take note of the nine year anniversary as I get to know the neighbourhoods and… Read more »
Time Machine Being Built South of the Border
The first steps towards building a historical time machine are underway south of the border. A group of American history educators have founded an ambitious plan to create the “Civil War Augmented Reality Project.” This first time machine will be a literal window into the past. By taking advantage of smart phone and tablet computer technology, as well as their… Read more »
Can We Redeem File-Sharing After the Download Decade?
The term “download decade” is an effective description of the first ten years of this infant century and the first rising chapter of the so-called Information Age. It accurately distills the blind conspiracy between the exponential availability of high-speed Internet, the gradual decrease in the cost of personal computers, the rise of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and websites like Napster and… Read more »
Dr. Georgina Feldberg, 1956-2010
The history community lost a great teacher, scholar and active historian this week. I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Feldberg during my first year at York. She was one of the professors in a graduate course on the history of science, health and the environment. I learned a lot from her as a teacher and from her book, Disease… Read more »
Scientific Instruments as “a History with, of, and Through Things”*
The “Reading Artifacts: Summer Institute in Material Culture Research” at the Canada Science and Technology Museum is another symptom of the growing trend in history and philosophy of science studies to include scientific artifacts as a resource for historical investigation and argumentation. In Leviathan and the Air Pump, Shapin and Schaffer argued scientific instruments are integral to the making of… Read more »
Campaigning with History: Wildlands and Woodlands
Last week we have two great posts by Tom and Alix on historians engaging with current issues and the value of “thinking with history” for policy development. Both these post brought to mind a project in New England that I learned about at an environmental history conference a few years ago. The Wildland and Woodlands campaign is to protect 70%… Read more »
The Politics of Textbooks: How Texas Wants to Educate the Nation
The recent changes to the ‘standards’ for history textbooks in Texas go right to the heart of academics and their legitimacy as historians.