Featured series 
Tag: ” American history
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Nation & World
How white supremacy became part of nation’s fabric
Historian Donald Yacovone chronicles racist values, historical falsehoods woven through textbooks in his new book.
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Arts & Culture
Taking big bites of history
A Q&A with Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and author of “Joe Gould’s Teeth.”
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Campus & Community
‘I had the advantage of disadvantage’
Interview with Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as part of the Experience series.
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Arts & Culture
Revolutionary thinker
In his new book, “The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding,” Professor of Government Eric Nelson focuses on abuses of the British Parliament, rather than the actions of the crown, as the central force behind the Revolution.
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Campus & Community
Teaching on campus and off
Harvard lecturer Tim McCarthy teaches a free American history course to low-income adult students as part of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, for which he now holds the first endowed chair.
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Arts & Culture
On closer inspection, not such a plain Jane
In her latest work, “Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin,” Jill Lepore, a professor of U.S. history at Harvard and a staff writer for The New Yorker, brings Benjamin Franklin’s sister out of history’s fog and into the open.
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Science & Tech
When the sky turned black
Director Ken Burns presented clips of his new documentary on the Dust Bowl at Harvard’s Boylston Hall, talking about the creative process that he uses in his films.
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Campus & Community
Scholar publishes book on Civil War
“Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War,” a book by Megan Kate Nelson, has recently been published by the University of Georgia Press.
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Arts & Culture
Whither Guantánamo
In his new book, “Guantánamo: An American History,” lecturer Jonathan Hansen uncovers the rich and controversial history of an American empire on the tip of Cuba.
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Campus & Community
Historian’s book a prize finalist
Professor Maya Jasanoff is one of three finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize for “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” published by Knopf.
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Campus & Community
The Civil War’s allures, and horrors
People are “powerfully attracted to war,” Harvard President Drew Faust told a crowd at the Cambridge Public Library on Jan. 10, and no conflict draws as much continuing interest and controversy in America as its own Civil War. The historian’s job is to balance that allure with a search for the truth, Faust said.
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Arts & Culture
The line that defines
A new book by Rachel St. John unearths the colorful history of the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico.
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Campus & Community
Remembering 9/11
Harvard plans services, vigils, panels to draw meaning from 10th anniversary of 9/11 tragedy.
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Nation & World
Church of one
Americans are a God-fearing people, but we increasingly identify as nonreligious, according to Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. Putnam shed light on “the rise of the nones” and other findings from his new book, “American Grace,” in a talk at Harvard Divinity School on Feb. 15.
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Arts & Culture
American tune
Ethnomusicology graduate student Sheryl Kaskowitz talks about her dissertation on cultural shifts in the meaning of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”
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Arts & Culture
Feeling the pinch
Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman’s gripping history of FDR’s most prominent — and turbulent — Supreme Court justices plays out in his book, “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices.”
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Arts & Culture
The measure of the man
James Kloppenberg, chair of Harvard’s History Department, is out with a new book called “Reading Obama,” which parses the American president through his own writings.
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Arts & Culture
The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History
Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation’s founding, including the battle waged by the tea party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to “take back America.”
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Nation & World
To the heart of a movement
Professor Jill Lepore, a contributor to The New Yorker, examines the movement behind the tea party in “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History.”
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Campus & Community
David Herbert Donald
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 5, 2010, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late David Herbert Donald, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of American Civilization Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Donald was an influential scholar of American history and noted biographer…
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Arts & Culture
Slavery in the North, and more
Du Bois Institute hosts a book party celebrating former and current fellows’ recent publications, including a title that examines little-known slavery in the North.
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Arts & Culture
Rebels to some, achievers to others
For two lecturers, the achievements of American radicals have been too long ignored. They argue that a reappraisal is due.
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Campus & Community
Ulrich receives Kennedy Medal
Harvard Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was honored Wednesday evening (Oct. 14) as the 10th recipient of the John F. Kennedy Medal of the Massachusetts Historical Society. She is the first woman given the award.
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Campus & Community
Two American religious historians appointed to the Faculty of Divinity
Renowned scholars of American religious history R. Marie Griffith and Leigh Eric Schmidt have been appointed to the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) faculty, effective July 1. Griffith will be the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, and Schmidt will be the Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America.