George Washington’s Hair
How Early Americans Remembered the Founders
hidden from public view, like an embarrassing family secret, scores of putative locks of George Washington’s hair are held, more than two centuries after his death, in the collections of America’s historical societies, public and academic archives, and museums. Excavating the origins of these bodily artifacts, Keith Beutler, PhD ’05 uncovers a forgotten strand of early American memory practices and emerging patriotic identity.
Van Engen wins the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize
Abram Van Engen, professor of English in Arts & Sciences, has won the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize for “City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism.”
Ethics in Higher Education
Promoting Equity and Inclusion Through Case-Based Inquiry
Rebecca M. Taylor, AB ’06, and Ashley Floyd Kuntz, look at seven normative cases that happen on college campuses and discuss collaborative and multidisciplinary ways to tackle these deeply complex issues.
Flowe wins Littleton-Griswold Prize for ‘Uncontrollable Blackness’
Douglas Flowe, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences, has won the 2021 Littleton-Griswold Prize for his book “Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York.”
Teaching about race in K-12 education
Lisa Gilbert, a lecturer in education in Arts & Sciences, shares her perspective on how social studies education has changed over the last 20-30 years, why this has become such a polarizing issue and where schools should go from here.
Mustakeem joins historian lectureship program
Sowande’ Mustakeem, associate professor of history and of African and African American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, has been appointed to the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program.
WashU Expert: Did 9/11 ‘change everything’?
For years after the World Trade Center collapsed, it became common to hear that “9/11 changed everything.” Yet the phrase is ripe for historical analysis, said Krister Knapp, teaching professor and minor adviser in history in Arts & Sciences.
WashU Expert: There is no end to forever
The swift fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban apparently signals the end of a nearly 20-year conflict. But is it, asks Krister Knapp, a teaching professor of history in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Or is this simply the beginning of the next chapter of U.S/Afghan entanglements?
WashU Expert: Play it again, Uncle Sam
Rick and Ilsa, “Casablanca’s” ill-fated lovers, will always have Paris. Uncle Sam will always have Kabul. And Saigon. And Baghdad. In the long-running tragedy of American foreign entanglements, Uncle Sam has become less a hapless romantic idealist and more a cynical “love ’em and leave ’em” serial abuser, says veteran filmmaker Richard Chapman.
Electrifying Mexico
Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City
Many visitors to Mexico City’s 1886 Electricity Exposition were amazed by their experience of the event, which included magnetic devices, electronic printers, and a banquet of light. It was both technological spectacle and political messaging, for speeches at the event lauded President Porfirio Díaz and bound such progress to his vision of a modern order. […]
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