The past is present
Despite a renowned career as a writer and activist, Upton Sinclair lacks a museum in his honor. His home in California would make an ideal house museum. His biographer reflects on Sinclair's legacy, the importance of public history sites, and the role of historic homes in shaping public memory.
Historical commissions function as state-sponsored public history initiatives that negotiate contested national pasts.
Ethical access to digital archives includes issues of privacy, sensitive content, and ethical representation of marginalized communities. This piece examines nine digital archives and their attempts to navigate ethical issues.
Mayor Mamdani’s use of a Quran from Schomburg’s collection [...] embraces the Afro-diasporic history and identity that Arturo Schomburg strove to create through his archive-building and auto/biographical writing.
Even well-intentioned efforts at historical reckoning can reproduce epistemic harm when they rely on unexamined disciplinary assumptions.
The United States has almost always been a very politically divided nation. Conservative majorities on the Supreme Court are mistakenly viewed as unique to recent years, but they are really the norm in American history. So too is political polarization the norm.
Working at a public history site is a reminder that no community is monolithic or similar-minded. Even at James Monroe's Highland more localized communities are composed of diverse needs, questions, and missions.
The historian's training prepares them for diverse career paths, but departments must better relate the component skills of historical research to the responsibilities of non-academic professions.
We are always learning new things about the past, and that's good. As we learn more, we are also obligated to share these new discoveries to our public. That is currently what we are doing at James Monroe's Highland: telling new, more truthful stories about a place with a complicated historical and institutional history.
The Business of History syllabus challenges students to merge the often creative, open-ended nature of academic inquiry with the outcomes-oriented and deadline-driven world of business.
Clio and the Contemporary 