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Overhead view of people walking around in the Mall of America

The Most American Form of Architecture Isn’t Going Anywhere

A new book challenges the dominant narrative that malls are dying.
Sheet music cover for "My Old Kentucky Home."

Emily Bingham on the Material Culture of White America’s Song to Itself: “My Old Kentucky Home”

A haunting exploration of “My Old Kentucky Home” reveals how a minstrel song rooted in slavery became a nostalgic American icon embedded in consumer culture.
The Alamo.

Texas' White Guy History Project

The 1836 Project will indoctrinate new Texans with fables about our history.
Decorative glass ash tray.

Mementos Mori

What else is lost when an object disappears?
Plantation house in the snow.

The Grim History of Christmas for Slaves in the Deep South

"If you read enough sources, you run into cases of slaves spending a lot of time over Christmas crying."
Cover of an early Superman comic book.

The Vigilante World of Comic Books

A sweeping new history traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.
Photograph of a dilapidated mall from the rear parking lot.

Mallstalgia

Once derided as cesspools of Reagan-era consumerist excess, the shopping mall somehow became an unlikely sort-of quasi-public space that is now disappearing.
The cover of the book Her Stories by Elana Levine

Guiding Lights: On “Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History”

Annie Berke reviews Elana Levine's book on a pivotal genre and its diverse fandom.
Drawing of Stranger Things main characters on bikes

Historicizing Dystopia: Suburban Fantastic Media and White Millennial Childhood

On the nostalgic and technophobic motives of the recent boom in suburban fantastic media.
Removal of graffitied Stonewall Jackson statue

The Fate of Confederate Monuments Should Be Clear

We know why they were built and why they have to come down.

The Myth of the Golden Years

Whether economic times are good or bad, the lament for the old days of factories and mills never changes.
Collection of photographs ranging including shareholders' meeting protests, the city of Rochester, and Kodak founder George Eastman.

The Rise and Fall of an American Tech Giant

Kodak changed the way Americans saw themselves and their country. But it struggled to reinvent itself for the digital age.
Building with a currogated tin facade and sign saying "Richard Perkins Contractor"

The Anti-Nostalgia of Walker Evans

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.
Black and white photo of roller skaters in Central Park.

The Great New York City Roller-Skating Boom

In 1980, the whole city seemed to be on skates. I’m not sure why.
Collage with a woman pointing to a midcentury modern chair

Instagram’s Favorite Furniture Style Has an Uncomfortable History

How we sit isn’t the only thing midcentury modernism sought to control.

The People, It Depends

What's the matter with left-populism? A review of Thomas Frank's "The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism."
Still life painting, “Early American, Apples in a Porcelain Basket” (2007), by Sharon Core.

After Apple Picking

The decline of South Carolina's apple industry, interwoven with personal memories of family orchards.
Person kneeling with a Trump flag tied to their back, in front of a large wooden cross during the Capitol Siege

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

Are the evangelicals who voted for Trump and stormed the Capitol in his defense part of the fringe of evangelicalism, or the core?
Performers in "Black America" posing in their costumes

Black America, 1895

The bizarre and complex history of Black America, a theatrical production which revealed the conflicting possibilities of self-expression in a racist society.
Ernest Thompson Seton posing with three citizens of the Blackfeet Nation, ca. 1917.

This Land Is Your Land

Native minstrelsy and the American summer camp movement.
Boys holding a sign and working

What the Greatest Generation Had That the Covid Generation Lacks

Americans are no more selfish in 2020 than they were in the 1940s, the difference between the two moments is about national leadership, not national character.
Two adults holding hands with a child in front of a Christmas tree

The Oracle of Our Unease

The enchanted terms in which F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed modern America still blind us to how scathingly he judged it.
A nose smelling.

What Smells Can Teach Us About History

How we perceive the senses changes in different historical, political, and cultural contexts. Sensory historians ask what people smelled, touched and tasted.

Officer Friendly and the Invention of the “Good Cop”

If your childhood vision of police is all pet rescues and tinfoil badges, Friendly’s “copaganda” did its job.
The five members of The Band in black and white

Is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” Really a Pro-Confederate Anthem?

The answer may lie in the ear of the beholder.
Still from "The Baby Sitters Club" TV show.

The Baby-Sitters Club Is Ready to Teach a New Generation About Work

Locked-down parents will need an army of tween child-minders. Let "The Baby-Sitters Club" show them the way.
Youth members of a German-American Bund camp raising a flag, 1934.

American Fascism: It Has Happened Here

Americans of the interwar period were perfectly clear about one fact we have lost sight of today: all fascism is indigenous, by definition.
A grilled cheese sandwich.
partner

A Brief History of Comfort Food

Our newest culinary trend is also our oldest.

“Victory Gardens” Are Back in Vogue. But What Are We Fighting This Time?

“Growing your own vegetables is great; beating Nazis is great. I think we’re all nostalgic for a time when anything was that simple.”

History Won’t Save Us

Why the battle for history must be won in the here and now.

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