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Illustration of an AI machine reading a book.

How AI Can Make History

Large language models can do a lot of things. But can they write like an 18th-century fur trader?
by Josh Dzieza via The Verge on February 15, 2024
Person using SUPARS system on old computer

The 1970s Librarians Who Revolutionised the Challenge of Search

A group of 1970s campus librarians foresaw our world of distributed knowledge and research, and designed search tools for it.
by Monica Westin via Aeon on June 5, 2023
President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination

JFK’s Assassination and “Doing Your Own Research”

Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories.
by Livia Gershon, Kathryn Olmsted via JSTOR Daily on April 20, 2023
Harold Washington on a button

Primary Sources are a Vibe

Historian Melanie Newport turns to eBay.
by Alexis Coe, Melanie Newport via Study Marry Kill on November 10, 2021
African American men in suits, sitting outside of a drugstore

The Game Is Changing for Historians of Black America

For centuries, stories of Black communities have been limited by racism in the historical record. Now we can finally follow the trails they left behind.
by William Sturkey via The Atlantic on May 4, 2021
Photo of the 1870 U.S. Census, with lines highlighted in orange, yellow, and green

The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington's Birthday

If Booker T. Washington never knew when he was born, how are we so sure about it now?
by Bill Black via Contingent on April 5, 2021

The Way We Write History Has Changed

A deep dive into an archive will never be the same.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on January 21, 2020

The Keeper of the Secret

After decades of silence, one man pursues accountability, apologies and the meaning of racial reconciliation.
by Stephanie McCrummen via Washington Post on March 30, 2019
Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Tiya Miles.

Talk of Souls in Slavery Studies

The co-winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize on researching slavery.
by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Tiya Miles, Jim Knable via Medium on February 26, 2019

The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson's Archives

On a presidential paper trail.
by Robert A. Caro via The New Yorker on January 22, 2019
Book cover for The Invention of Design by Maggie Gram features a phone cord snaking around text.
partner

Irrelevant at Best, or Else Complicit

The state of design in 1970.
by Maggie Gram via HNN on June 3, 2025
An illustration of a government building holding up an American home with a stylized hand.

The Good Society Department

Once upon a time, there was a federal government department that helped design and distribute tools for living the good life. What happened to that vision?
by John Last via Noema on April 3, 2025
Three Black men having a conversation.

Recovering the Forgotten Past of Black Legal Lives

Dylan C. Penningroth challenges nearly every aspect of our traditional understanding of civil rights history.
by Ajay K. Mehrotra via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 3, 2025
American Flag with Stars replaced with atoms and stripes replaced by syringes and graduated cylinders

The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation

In the ’50s, America declared science an ‘endless frontier.’ We may be reaching the end of it.
by Carly Anne York via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2025
Old photo of Zora Neale Hurston laughing and holding a cigarette.

Go Hard or Go Home

On folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who passed away sixty-five years ago today.
by Huda Hassan via Mother, Loosen My Tongue on January 28, 2025
A 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Lake Mendota, Wisconsin.

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as Egypt's Great Pyramids

Tamara Thomsen discovered a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota in 2021, spurring efforts to catalog historic canoes statewide.
by Jacqueline Kehoe via Smithsonian on December 26, 2024
Author Sanora Babb, with her husband James Wong Howe, in their library.

The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression

John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.
by Scott Bradfield via The New Republic on November 12, 2024
Bob Dylan performing on stage.

The Lines, They Are A-Changin’

Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives.
by Justin Taylor via Bookforum on October 29, 2024
A variety of apples on a rustic wooden table.

Apples Have Never Tasted So Delicious. Here’s Why

Apple experts divide time into “before Honeycrisp” and “after Honeycrisp,” and apples have never tasted so good.
by Laura Helmuth via Scientific American on October 24, 2024
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
by Ruth Franklin via Harper’s on October 23, 2024
A car in a dark night on an empty road with a ghostly apparition.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker Legend Is an Ancient Tale That Keeps Evolving

The classic creepy story—a driver offers a lift to a stranger who is not of this world—has deep roots and a long reach.
by Mark Hay via Atlas Obscura on October 10, 2024
Boxes in the University of Illinois Archives

Historians Killing History

The driving question of scholarship should be “what is the evidence for your argument?” Instead, it has become “whose side are you on?”
by Katherine C. Epstein via Liberties Journal on October 1, 2024
A portrait of Major Ridge, an older Cherokee man.
partner

Revealed Through a Mountain of Paperwork

As the nation’s highest court debated Native sovereignty, I was in the archives, uncovering family stories entwined with those debates.
by Rebecca Nagle via HNN on September 24, 2024
Alice Morgan Wright with unknown friend, sitting on a tree stump.

Reconstructing the Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Rouse reveals the hidden queer histories of suffragists like Alice Morgan Wright, who balanced activism with private, erased relationships.
by Wendy L. Rouse via Gay And Lesbian Review on September 20, 2024
Civil Defense warning.

The Occasion Instant, 1961

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?
by Alex Wellerstein via Doomsday Machines on September 11, 2024
Physicists posing in front of a 60-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1944.

How Professors Helped Win World War II

College professors were vital in the fight to win WWII, lending their time and research to building bombs to creating effective wartime propaganda.
by Will Mari via The Saturday Evening Post on September 4, 2024
Emmett Till's photo is seen on his grave marker in 2002.

Journalist Withheld Information About Emmett Till’s Murder, Documents Show

William Bradford Huie’s newly released research notes show he suspected more than two men tortured and killed Emmett Till, but suggest that he left it out.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on August 29, 2024
Drawing showing teacher in front of the blackboard while students look bored in the back of the classroom.

Why Professors Can’t Teach

For as long as universities have existed, academics have struggled to impart their knowledge to students. The failing is fixable—if Washington demands it.
by Jonathan Zimmerman via Washington Monthly on August 25, 2024
A view of a hallway inside of an archive lined with bookshelves.

On the Dark History and Ongoing Ableist Legacy of the IQ Test

How research helps us understand the past to create a better future.
by Pepper Stetler via Literary Hub on August 23, 2024
A swamp in Southampton County, Virginia.

An Extraordinary Historical Collaboration Sees Nat Turner's Rebellion in a Prophetic Light

A new book argues that we misunderstand the forces that drove the notorious slave rebel.
by David W. Blight via Los Angeles Times on August 9, 2024
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