Humanities & Society

Peter Kastor, the Samuel K. Eddy Professor and chair of history in Arts & Sciences, was featured on C-SPAN’s “Lectures in History.”

Find out how Washington University got its name, and learn more about its founding, its mission and some of its pivotal leaders over the years.

Professor Emeritus Wayne Fields reflects on the transformative leadership of Bill Danforth.

William H. Danforth (1926-2020) served as Washington University’s 13th chancellor. A man of compassion, Chancellor Danforth touched the lives of countless students, faculty and staff, and he oversaw the university’s rise from a commuter campus to a world-renowned institution.

In his new book, “Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York,” historian Douglas Flowe at Washington University in St. Louis investigates the meanings of crime, violence and masculinity in the lives of those facing economic isolation, segregation and overt racial attack.

Four faculty members share their thoughts on the complicated history of the women’s suffrage movement, the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and their hopes for what we might do today to honor the anniversary.

Alumna Laura Adams McKie helped build a museum that teaches visitors about the suffrage movement and the prison where women were sent for picketing for the right to vote.

“Dateline­–Saigon,” a documentary about Vietnam War reporting produced by Richard Chapman, senior lecturer in film and media studies in Arts & Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has been released for streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime and other platforms.

Douglas Flowe, assistant professor of history, discusses the history of Juneteenth and its continued resonance for all Americans.

Umbrella Man. Outside agitators. Agents provocateur. As protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd continue, conspiracy theories and “false flag” charges have flown fast and furious. But sometimes the conspiracy is real. In “F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature” (2015), William J. Maxwell, professor of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, details a decades-long harassment campaign waged against prominent African American writers and activists.