By Jonathan McQuarrie Not long after Donald Trump’s victory, Hillary Clinton sought to reassure her supporters, and perhaps herself. Echoing President Obama, who in turn drew on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she said “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” This is a reasonable and comforting thing to assert, and it may well be right…. Read more »
Things aren’t looking very bright for the arts and humanities at the moment. In our current age of austerity, arts and humanities budgets are easy targets for spending reductions. In both the United States and Canada, politicians seem focused on cuts. During his 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney identified the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for… Read more »
By Dagomar Degroot In Toronto, 2013 was a year of storms. The media storm kindled by the mayor’s chicanery was twice interrupted by meteorological storms that threatened lives and property on an unprecedented scale. On July 8th more than 100 mm of rain inundated the city in a matter of hours, triggering flash floods that caused more than $1 billion… Read more »
By Dagomar Degroot As this is published, so-called “Frankenstorm” hurricane Sandy is flooding large swaths of the American east coast. The deaths of more than sixty people in the Caribbean will likely represent this historic storm’s most direct and poignant toll. However, as reports of devastation come in from across the most densely populated regions of the United States it… Read more »
By Nathan Smith Here in East York Canada Day celebrations began in the morning with a parade. I pulled my daughter in her wagon to the starting point a few blocks from our house. As we hurried to meet neighbours I reflected on the nature of the event organizing itself just beyond a set of traffic lights ahead. Historians of… Read more »
By Andrew Watson Stories bring places to life, and places attach special meaning to stories. Every story takes place somewhere, and every place has a story to tell. Historians, especially ‘Active’ historians have a responsibility to tie the stories we tell to the places where they unfolded. The evidence historians uncover and the insight historians apply to that evidence combine… Read more »
This is a demonstration by Ian Milligan of how word clouds can be used to visually display textual documents, with possible applications in the educational field, media field, and elsewhere. It also has lots of pretty pictures.
While Hip Hop’s socio-political consciousness has faded, the examples in this post denote that it is not dead. However, even as some employ its ethos to confront material realities, others invest only it its promise of wealth, power and pleasure. Thus the reason why the time is ripe for this reminder: Hip Hop wields much power, but with that power comes responsibility.
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Miranda-History-Matters-talk.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadLast Thursday, historian Susana Miranda gave a talk called “Keeping the City Clean: Portuguese Women in Toronto’s Cleaning Industry, 1970-1990” at the Bloor/Gladstone branch of the Toronto Public Library. The lecture is part of the Toronto Public Library’s History Matters series. As you can see in the image to the left, she started… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bonnell-History-Matters-talk.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadHistorian Jennifer Bonnell recently gave a talk called “Isolating Undesirables: Prisons, Pollution and Homelessness in Toronto’s Don River Valley, 1860-1932” at the Berndale branch of the Toronto Public Library. The lecture is part of the Toronto Public Library’s History Matters series. The lecture is based on research for Bonnell’s PhD dissertation, which examined… Read more »
