By Dr Noeleen McIlvenna As we all learn more than we ever wanted to about pandemics, historians of America and especially of the colonial era can help set COVID-19 in context. Stories from the tragedy of the Native holocaust upon the arrival of new viruses in the sixteenth century remind us of the terror and devastation that might befall us. But they also teach us … Continue reading A Lesson for Today
By Dr. Niels Eichorn On June 9, 1853 the Irish firebrand and 1848 revolutionary, John Mitchel rode into Bothwell, Tasmania, where he walked into the police station. The British authorities had convicted Mitchel and a number of other Irish revolutionaries to transportation. Instead of incarceration, Mitchel had promised to not escape and received a limited freedom of movement. Once inside the police station, Mitchel returned … Continue reading Transatlantic Separatist Migration and the War of the Rebellion
By Dr. Ross A. Brooks My older brother brought the American Civil War into my outer suburban Melbourne world. It came in the form of “The How and Why Wonder Book of the Civil War.” I was perhaps eight and he returned home with it as spoils from a trip to the city with my grandmother. It was new, it was attractive, and I took … Continue reading The Visible Confederacy
By Dr Lindsay Rae Privette, I spent seven years working as a summer seasonal at Vicksburg National Military Park. It was a natural fit. I was born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the battlefield had been a staple of my childhood, and I knew its story by heart. Dubbed the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” Vicksburg was the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River by … Continue reading Invaders in a Foreign Land: Nature, Climate, and the Vicksburg Campaign
By Matthew Thorne It was the month of December and London was calling for the British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Conference. The event was held on hallowed ground for academics and sight-seers alike; the British Library, hosted within the Eccles Centre for American Studies. Try as one might, it is difficult to imagine a better venue for a conference on American Studies in the … Continue reading Conference Review: BAAS Postgraduate Conference, December 2019
By Dr Georgiana Banita Ever since my first engagement with the traumatic relation between race and policing (the conference, Black America and the Police in 2016), I have sought to trace what I consider to be the guiding principle of repressive state action against communities of color: the anticipation of black violence. This period has also overlapped with technology advancements in digitally-driven predictive … Continue reading Models of Black Motion: On the Predictive Policing of Race
Dr Julian Chambliss is a Professor of History and English at Michigan State University. He is involved in a number of digital humanities projects and serves as a core faculty member in the Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Initiative. He teaches courses exploring critical making, comics, and culture in the United States and has been recognized for his community engagement work with a Rollins … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Professor Julian Chambliss
By Associate Professor Jessica Kim Much of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric and policy proposals focus on the closure of borders, the building of walls, and limiting the flow of goods and people across international boundaries. This inflammatory speech belies the deep historical connectedness of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, from migration and employment patterns, to the flow of trade goods and services, to the existence of … Continue reading Roads and Walls in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
By Professor Mark Rice How should we make sense of colonial photographs that bridge the divide or blur the lines between different colonial regimes who occupied the same place but at different times? That question is at the heart of my current research project, a project that involves more than 150 photographs taken by two young, white, American men in the Philippines in the … Continue reading Thinking About Colonial Photography Through the Photographs of the Menage Expedition to the Philippines
By Professor Greg Barnhisel I came to Australia to track down a spy. More accurately, I came to Australia partly to try and find out whether someone was a spy. For the past few years, I’ve been writing a biography of Norman Holmes Pearson. You probably haven’t heard of Pearson; almost nobody has. One of the things I’m trying to do is show that … Continue reading Searching for a spy
