During her visit to Boulder on September 28-29, Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernández sat down with Erstwhile Managing Editor Julia Frankenbach to talk about her new book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965. The historiography of incarceration in the United States, Lytle Hernández explained, centers on the…
Following the violent demonstration by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th, national dialogue about the significance of American history—and its telling—has crescendoed. Two weeks after white supremacists clashed with counter-protestors over the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, public leaders have turned unprecedented critical attention to other public…
The contributing editors at Erstwhile wish you a happy holiday season. While the bloggers are on leave, we hope you will revisit and enjoy the semester’s material. Thoughtful historical commentary on current events, research, and ideas will resume in January!
Contributing editor Julia Frankenbach considers the importance of early western American literature for academic historians and for a politically engaged American public. In this moment of political confusion, facts begin to ring hollow. The broader truths and guiding ethics in the writings of our western American forebears may help as we seek the way forward.…
Erstwhile editor Julia Frankenbach recounts her experience at “E is for Environment,” UW-Madison’s recent graduate student symposium hosted by the Center for Culture, History & the Environment (CHE). Last Saturday morning, an unfamiliar rosy light filtered through curtains. Expecting a rosy sunrise, I looked from my window on the fourth floor of a conference center…
Erstwhile editor Julia Frankenbach reflects on the vitality of the notion of wildness in her everyday life, arguing for the inseparability of academic and non-academic learning. It was a sunny mid-October day on the Colorado Front Range. I had just finished the week’s work, so I drove the twelve miles north from Boulder to visit…
Erstwhile blogger Julia Frankenbach reflects on historical and contemporary notions of California as an exotic place. California has come together more than once. In multiple histories—in matter and in mind—the massive swath of land on the western cusp of North America assembled and assumed a place on the continent. My efforts to assemble memories of…
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