This afternoon at 4:30pm, Molly Rogers, author of Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in 19th-Century America, will be interviewed by eminent historian David Blight about her book here on Yale’s campus. The book retells the story of seven South Carolina slaves who were photographed at the request of Swiss
The official publication of Carla L. Peterson’s Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City is Tuesday, February 22, but already she is lending her voice to the story of free blacks in the age of slavery and Reconstruction in New York. Today, Peterson will
Michelle Stein George Gershwin’s music is a near inimitable part of American culture. Though he lived a short life, dying at the age of thirty-eight, the work he composed during his life offered a long-lasting heritage and contribution to American musicals and concert pieces. In 1935, Gershwin’s American folk opera
NBC’s 2nd season of Who Do You Think You Are? premieres tomorrow night at 8/7c. Following its first season’s coverage of stars such as Brooke Shields, Emmitt Smith, and Sarah Jessica Parker, new episodes will feature new celebrities like Kim Cattrall, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Vanessa Williams. The pursuit of personal
It’s time to celebrate Black History Month, and even though the Super Bowl is still to come this weekend, already baseball fans are gearing up for Opening Day on March 31. Thinking back to Jackie Robinson’s entrance into the MLB with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the league has come
An op-ed piece was posted to the New York Times’s “Opinionator” by Carla L. Peterson, whose book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, will be published next month. As part of the Times’s Disunion series, following the Civil War as it unfolded as
The new, Winter 2011 issue of the American Scholar has a selection of entries from our forthcoming book Alfred Kazin’s Journals, edited by Richard M. Cook. As a prominent public intellectual, Kazin’s circle of influence in postwar America was formidable. The letters excerpted in the American Scholar include Kazin’s thoughts
Today celebrities’ lives and activities are scrutinized by their fans, but many have also begun to scrutinize celebrity itself. Reality television has enabled many to become famous for living their lives (or, of course, participating in a wide variety of competitions). The internet has brought us tidbits and news far
Everyone knows that certain aspects of the 90s will be making a comeback in the coming months. 70s disco had its revival in the early 90s, and the long-spanning cultural memories of the 80s are only now beginning to peter out. (We even brought back He-Man in that last round.)
Ivan Lett Admittedly, it’s a bit early in the season to think about gift returns, but today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The 1773 Tea Act was hardly a gift, but unless you’ve been hiding under the harbor all year, you know all about the current political