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Roundup

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

  • SOURCE: New York Daily News
    3/1/2021

    The Peace Corps and White Saviorism

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    "By all means, let’s use the Peace Corps’ 60th anniversary to critique white saviors. Too many Americans still march blindly around the globe, imagining that they can make a difference by their mere presence. But some of the people attacking white saviorism have a savior complex of their own."

  • SOURCE: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
    3/1/2021

    A Rapidly Globalizing World Needs Strengthened Global Governance

    by Lawrence Wittner

    "The world is currently engulfed in crises—most prominently, a disease pandemic, a climate catastrophe, and the prevalence of war—while individual nations are encountering enormous difficulties in coping with them."

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    2/26/2021

    Seeking the True Story of the Comfort Women

    by Jeannie Suk Gersen

    A Harvard Law School professor tried to understand why her colleague made a provocative and contrarian argument that Korean "comfort women" engaged in voluntary sex work. She discovered that recourse to the facts was both straightforward and frustrating.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/1/2021

    Originalism’s Original Sin

    by Adam Shapiro

    Liberal critics should understand the ways that Constitutional originalism's practices of reading and resolving conflicts in the text owes a great deal to biblical literalism. Historians of religion can help understand what's at stake. 

  • SOURCE: National Parks Traveler
    2/25/2021

    Op-Ed | Confederate Memorials Serve A Role In National Parks

    by Harry Butowski

    "The removal of existing statues in our Civil War parks will not change our history, but make it more difficult to confront and examine our history. National parks are the great American classroom where American history is taught."

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    3/1/2021

    Writing Histories of Witchcraft in a Pandemic

    by Richard Tomzcak

    A course on witch trials, run remotely due to the pandemic, offered a chance to push students to examine new sources, write for the public, and consider how historical subjects acted in a climate of fear and suspicion not entirely different from our own.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/1/2021

    The Sex Scandal that Reshaped Congress — and the Warnings for Today

    by Julian Zelizer

    Wilbur Mills's reckless public conduct, culminating in drunkenly hijacking the microphone at a performance by his mistress, an exotic dancer with the stage name of Fanne Foxe, led to reform of the sclerotic seniority system that gave old Southern conservatives a stranglehold on legislation. 

  • SOURCE: Folklife
    3/1/2021

    “Making a Living by the Sweat of Her Brow”: Hazel Dickens and a Life of Work

    by Emily Hilliard

    "Hazel’s song catalog is often divided into separate categories of personal songs, women’s songs, and labor songs. But in her view and experience, these issues all bled together; her songs address struggle against any form of domination and oppression, whether of women, workers, or herself."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/19/2021

    Restoring the Fairness Doctrine Can't Prevent Another Rush Limbaugh

    by Heather Hendershot

    "The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine alone did not create Limbaugh or the presidency of Donald Trump. Catering to market demands for shock and awe programming did, and that is why neither Limbaugh’s death nor a return to this network-era regulation will solve the problem."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/25/2021

    The Missing Piece of the Minimum Wage Debate

    by Colleen Doody

    Historical perspective on the origins of the federal minimum wage shows that critics of a $15 minimum ignore the positive economic effects of increased purchasing power. 

  • SOURCE: The Week
    2/18/2021

    Rush Limbaugh Taught Republicans To Rage

    by Neil J. Young

    Even from the perspective of today's degraded political culture that he helped bring about, Limbaugh's cruelty remains shocking.

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    2/23/2021

    When Men Started to Obsess Over Six-Packs

    by Conor Heffernan

    Today's culture of Instagrammed abdominal muscles traces back to the time when nineteenth-century physical culture movements converged with the archaeological discovery of ancient Greek statuary (bodybuilders then used the new technology of photography in ways we'd recognize). 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/22/2021

    The Campaign to Free the Wilmington 10 Holds the Key to Successful Activism Today

    by Kenneth Janken

    A campaign to free 10 racial justice protesters in 1972 worked because it connected the cause to the problems with police, poverty, and racism experienced by a broad cross section of the community, and "recognize[d] racism not as separate from history but as part of historical processes and political economy."