Happy New Year!

So, what is the right decision for Commonplace when it comes to choosing a social media strategy?

Before we move forward, it is a good time to look back on the history of Commonplace and its place in digital humanities over the last two decades.

Podcasts serve as a gateway to other media about history, serving as a tool for historians to engage with people who have an interest in the stories they tell.

Insights by four early-career scholars who work at the intersection of early American studies and the digital humanities.

It turns out that, in legal terms, the mystery of who found the broadside matters a lot less than who lost it.

“[I]n late March, just days before Plimoth Plantation’s village of 1627 was to come to life for the 2001 season, the museum’s 130 head of livestock were rounded up and removed to a modern breeding barn at the back of the property.”

A Historian’s Take on AMC’s Turn In telling the story of the American Revolution, academic historians and Hollywood filmmakers have […]

“We aim to represent the range of disability history resources by selecting representative artifacts from the genres where disability history is found: veterans’ pension documents, the circus sideshow, moral literature, postcards of institutions, deaf- and polio- and blind-community newspapers and newsletters, service-club ephemera and meeting minutes.”

My generation of historians and curators has worked hard to claim a space for critical history in our museums and historic sites and, at the same time, to make our storytelling emotionally compelling.

How would we, the voyagers, find quiet moments for reflection on this remarkable voyage? How would we behave among strangers?

Today it can sound like a cliché, but “follow the money” is actually pretty good advice if you’re a reporter […]

The advent of narrative history in the popular press makes engaging history students seem like a simple task. However, as […]

Sailors were not really supposed to sleep. They were supposed to work.

Published as part of the Special Edition: “First Person: The 38th Voyage”

I took from time with the Morgan an energized and reconceived sense of how to stage participatory projects, both within the academy and under the aegis of other cultural institutions.

Accuracy versus “Truth” in Television As a young kid I spent a portion of every summer with my father riding […]

Presented as part of the special issue “Early Cities of the Americas.”

“How did Independence National Historical Park become the location for what may become the most powerful commemoration of the impact, achievements, and aspirations of people held in slavery ever built in the United States?”

Not until the end of the nineteenth century did people begin to think that Monticello, as a historical place, should be preserved in something like its “original state.”

A Historical Turn for the Better, or Worse? Scholars of early America have a complicated relationship with historical movies and […]

Having been involved in different levels of reenacting for 30 years, from the French and Indian War to the Western […]

As with any decent varsity athletic program, an imperative of participation coexists alongside one of competition. At its best, History Day is genuinely inclusive.

Actually, his recent body of work shows a remarkably textured, yet consistent, vision of American history.

Experience, personal and otherwise, has shown me that it is not just white Americans who need to grasp the full scope of Native history. Native people can also benefit from a more just and accurate depiction of their past.

“So when we’ve lost our traditions we can come here and learn them from you.”

Hesperus was founded as a baroque ensemble in Arlington, Va., in 1979, but quickly expanded its repertoire to include colonial […]

Every museum has—must have—some unstated rules of inclusion, organization, and interpretation. But the musée du quai Branly’s rules seemed designed to undermine its own premises.

What do I want students to get out of this particular hour and fifteen minutes we will spend together—and, more importantly, what do I want them to get out of the study of history?

Published as part of the Special Edition “First Person: The 38th Voyage”

“I always feel that if just one reader stops and thinks for a second, I’ve been successful. I want them to wonder, ‘Did that really happen to Blackbeard when he got caught down in North Carolina?'”

Mr. Owsley: If we have skeletons that are that ancient that come out of the ground and there’s no opportunity for us to look at them, no opportunity to learn, then we will never have questions–we’ll never answer these questions of the past.
Ms. Stahl: We’re talking about our history?
Mr. Owsley: We’re talking about American history, yes.
–60 Minutes, October 25, 1998

The Newberry Consort presents historically informed programs of early music, often drawn from the collections at the Newberry Library, through […]

The making of Civil War memory did not begin only after the war ended. Americans began shaping their memories of […]

“Given its unique origins and historical identity, the Smithsonian would seem to deserve protection not just from private exploitation but also from the rigid ideological prescriptions of some of its would-be defenders.”

David and Ginger Hildebrand co-founded the Colonial Music Institute, which conducts and promotes research and offers information and resource materials […]

Why was this parent so frustrated when the site is full of primary sources? Because those sources too often had no context.

“In about their eighth year, children develop a sense of time and an ability to abstract that connect stories with pasts. They begin, that is, to think historically.”

“Public and private money spent amusing the millions with past-based reality television represents money not spent on other kinds of public-history experiments.”

My two little boys love the kids’ sections of megabookstores, so a trip to Borders to get out of the […]

“Too often reenactments come across as just what they are–half-hearted attempts to make history come alive in a dramatic way without using the elements that make for dramatic story-telling . . .”

One concept sure to provoke debate among scholars is the notion that a tribal understanding of the past may incorporate ways of knowing that are different from western epistemologies, yet more sophisticated than mere wishful thinking.

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