Memory

How best to tell the story of oppressed peoples? By chronicling the hardships they’ve faced? Or by highlighting their triumphs over adversity?

Treating the practice of land acknowledgment seriously requires more than just getting the names right.

There is more to Alfred Stieglitz’s iconic photograph “The Steerage” than meets the eye.

Right and left are united in a vulgar form of historicism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.

A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.

The author confronts the daunting task of writing about her childhood memory, both as a memoirist and a historian.

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.

“It’s important to study history if you want to be an intelligent citizen in a democracy.”

The Dahomey had fierce female fighters. They also sold people overseas.

There are nearly 100 towns named "Troy."

Responding to a controversial recent critique of "presentism," two historians make the case that history and politics have always been deeply interwoven.

Ken Burns’ account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering.

How does an image become “iconic?” And when it does, will its meaning change?

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.

How James Baldwin speaks to lethal myths of white innocence—and why his work belongs in public-school classrooms.

Calls for Covid-19 memorials echo Pericles' Athenian moratorium, prompting reflection on the appropriateness of commemoration for ongoing crises.

As climate change increases the severity of extreme weather events, the nation’s legacy is at risk.

What the recent debates over presentism get wrong.

An essay by the president of the American Historical Association generated a firestorm of criticism — but got some things right.

'Nothing is more dramatic than having the College Board launch an AP course in a field,' says Henry Louis Gates Jr., who helped develop the curriculum.

Bett Freeman's story and the legal precedent her case established are now forever remembered in Sheffield, Massachusetts.

A lively defense of narrative history and the lived experience that informs historical writing.

When historians concede to discuss the past with the terms of the present, they abandon the skill set that makes them historians.

All the articles from the University of Virginia's student newspaper covering the "Unite the Right" rally, and the grief, activism, and reforms it sparked.

Why universities must help lead the battle to defend and expand critical race theory.

Making the case for why U.S. history only makes sense when told as a binational story.

How the study of historical memory created a new reckoning with the creation of “American history."

After the 2020 removal of Confederate memorials, museums provide a place to confront the ugly past and find a way forward.