In the first of two posts on the Japanese-internment facility, Camp Amache, Erstwhile editor, Beau Driver, discusses the early history of Japanese internment and how this led to the establishment of Camp Amache, near Granada, Colorado. His second post, on the memorialization of the camp will follow in Spring 2019. When I took my first…
For many first-year graduate students, the advent of the school year brings all the promise of new experiences, new knowledge, and new challenges. Among the most nerve-racking of these challenges is the prospect of working as a teacher’s assistant for the first time. This August marks the eighth new school year that I have faced…
This week, Erstwhile editor Beau Driver interviews historian, blogger, and educator Kevin Gannon. Gannon is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He teaches and writes on race and politics in US and Latin American history and is a consultant…
Erstwhile editor Beau Driver returns to the Graphic Histories series with his review of Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World (2005), edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman. Author’s note: In the wake of the recent shooting of an IWW member and apparent anti-fascist demonstrator at the University of Washington…
Erstwhile‘s Beau Driver kicks off a news series on historical graphic novels by reviewing Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb in the inaugural edition of Erstwhile‘s “Graphic Histories.” Last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ari Kelman about his and Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s wonderful graphic history of the Civil War, Battle…
Winner of numerous awards including the Avery O. Craven Award and the Bancroft Prize, Ari Kelman is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University and the author of three books: A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (2003); A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand…
Erstwhile contributing editor Beau Driver shares some of his insights from the 2015 Organization of American Historians’ Conference with the hopes that some of his lessons will help those attending big conferences make the most of their own first-time conference experiences. As I write this, I sit waiting for the sun to crest the horizon…
Erstwhile editor and long-suffering fan of the Washington NFL franchise, Beau Driver, discusses new developments in the ongoing controversy over the team’s nickname. In late January of 1988, I sat down to watch the football team I loved play in Super Bowl XXII. This was the heyday of the Washington Redskins. Coach Joe Gibbs had…
Last month, Ivory Tower was released online and on DVD. The film takes a serious look at the rising cost of college education and seeks to answer questions about the future of higher education in the United States. With college debt in the U.S. now over 1 trillion dollars and the percentage of graduating students…
Rob Nelson (Ph.D., College of William and Mary) is the Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond and is a scholar of nineteenth-century America. Erstwhile’s Beau Driver spoke with Dr. Nelson about the possibilities and pitfalls of using Digital Humanities techniques in historical scholarship. Erstwhile blog: Hello Dr. Nelson, Could you introduce…
Erstwhile: A History Blog 