ahistoricism — Bunk History

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An old journal with cursive writing on the pages

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.

by Sonja Drimmer via Public Books on August 9, 2023

Marsha P. Johnson and others at Pride march, with large fan.

Beyond the Binary

The long history of trans.

by Stephanie Burt via The Nation on June 25, 2023

Goldfish bowl superimposed on close-up of eye.

Queer History Now!

“Queer” has experienced a loss of meaning and a curdling of political potential. To reinvigorate it, we need a new approach to history.

by Ben Miller via The Baffler on June 7, 2023

“Words Have Power” exhibit displayed at Fort Pulaski National Monument.

Why I Haven’t Embraced the Terms “Forced Labor Camp” and “Enslaved Labor Camp” in My Work on Slavery

“Forced labor” conflates different forms of labor throughout history and minimizes the uniquely brutal conditions of chattel slavery.

by Nick Sacco via Exploring the Past on June 2, 2023

Marian Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939.

Reading, Race, and "Robert's Rules of Order"

The book was an especially formal response to the complications of white supremacy, segregated democracy, and civil war.

by Kent Puckett via Public Books on April 28, 2023

Illustration of the word Facism, divided by various speach bubbles.

Does American Fascism Exist?

For nearly a century, Americans have been throwing the term around—without agreeing what that means.

by Daniel Bessner via The New Republic on March 6, 2023

Ron Desantis, his face partially covered by books, with soft gold lighting on his face and the book spines

The Forgotten Ron DeSantis Book

The Florida governor’s long-ignored 2011 work, "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers," reveals a distinct vision of American history.

by David Waldstreicher via The Atlantic on February 22, 2023

John Winthrop.

When Perry Miller Invented America

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.

by Ed Simon via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 5, 2023

Engraving of freed slaves arriving at Union lines, New Bern, North Carolina, 1863.

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?

by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 1, 2022

What AHA President James Sweet Got Wrong—And Right

Attacking presentism as a mindset of younger scholars doesn’t solve any of the historical profession's problems.

by Jonathan W. Wilson via Clio and the Contemporary on November 30, 2022

Redlining map from the 1930s

The Tyranny Of The Map: Rethinking Redlining

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?

by Robert Gioielli via The Metropole on November 3, 2022

Toward a Non-Usable History

"The New York Times" as the world's most exhausted professor.

by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on September 19, 2022

Up close of Viola Davis in African warrior gear from on the set of the film "The Woman King."

The Woman King Softens the Truth of the Slave Trade

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

by Ana Lucia Araujo via Slate on September 16, 2022

Painting of the Constitutional Convention in black and white.

Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law

Supporters of the “independent state legislature theory” are quoting fake history.

by Brian Palmer, Ethan Herenstein via Politico Magazine on September 15, 2022

New York, 1929, men pointing to a sign reading "No Booze Sold Here"

Freedom From Liquor

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

by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Aeon on September 6, 2022

Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present

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

by James H. Sweet via Perspectives on History on August 17, 2022

Illustration overlaying an image of Lucille Brown and a group of women over an image of Howard University

Higher Ed and the Policing of Memory

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

by Danielle Conway via The Forum on August 8, 2022

Evangelical lobbyist Peggy Nienaber (R) claims she prayed with Supreme Court justices as her organization was writing amicus briefs on cases like Dobbs.

Can SCOTUS Majority Learn the Lessons of Early America Before it's Too Late?

Breaking down the myths of originalism and America's founding.

by J. L. Tomlin, Thomas Lecaque via Religion Dispatches on July 18, 2022

Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894, by Curt Stoeving.

Nietzsche’s Quarrel with History

As much as we may wish otherwise, history gives us few reasons to believe that its moral arc bends toward justice.

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen via The Hedgehog Review on July 5, 2022

Break the History Addiction

July 4 and the perils of celebrating America’s past.

by David Armitage via New York Daily News on July 3, 2022

A picture of the front of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’

The conservative Supreme Court's favorite judicial philosophy requires a very, very firm grasp of history — one that none of the justices seem to possess.

by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on June 26, 2022

Gun rights advocates holding Second Amendment rally at which police officer Dick Heller spoke, at the State Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky, January 31, 2020.

The Remaking of the Second Amendment

The Supreme Court’s expanding interpretation of the Second Amendment threatens longstanding democratic authority to enact gun safety measures.

by Reva B. Siegel, Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on June 10, 2022

Racecraft and the 1619 Project

Historian Barbara J. Fields explains why you can't understand what happened in 1619 without understanding what happened in 1607.

by Center on Modernity in Transition via YouTube on May 4, 2022

Artistic collage of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

Did the Confederacy have a constitutional right to secede? And did Lincoln violate the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves?

by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on April 20, 2022

Ocean waves and cloudy skies.

The 1619 Project Unrepentantly Pushes Junk History

Nikole Hannah-Jones' new book sidesteps scholarly critics while quietly deleting previous factual errors.

by Phillip W. Magness via Reason on March 29, 2022

Marie Bankhead Owen sitting for portrait picture with title "State of Denial" printed next to her

How a Confederate Daughter Rewrote Alabama History for White Supremacy

Marie Bankhead Owen led campaigns to purge anti-Confederate lessons from Southern classrooms, and all but erased Black history from the Alabama state archives.

by Kyle Whitmire via al.com on February 16, 2022

Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lead a column of demonstrators as they attempt to march on Birmingham, Ala., city hall April 12, 1963. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)

King Was A Critical Race Theorist Before There Was a Name For It

When states ban antiracism history from schools, they're disavowing what King stood for.

by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw via Los Angeles Times on January 17, 2022

Collage of nature images and transcendentalists' faces, with flowers in Emerson's eyes.

Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom

Why do the Transcendentalists still have an outsize influence on American culture?

by Sarah Blackwood via The New Republic on January 6, 2022

Watercolor painting of enslaved people walking barefoot on a forced march, with white men on horseback at the front and back of the line.

Reparative Semantics: On Slavery and the Language of History

Scholarly accounts of slavery have been changing, but these correctives sometimes say more about historians than the historical subjects they're writing about.

by Nicholas T. Rinehart via Commonplace on January 4, 2022

The United States Supreme Court building.

‘Originalism’ Only Gives the Conservative Justices One Option On a Key Gun Case

Regulations limiting armed travel in public, particularly in populous areas, stretch back over seven centuries.

by Saul Cornell via Made By History on November 3, 2021

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