Jen McPherson (PhD Candidate, University of New Mexico) is a graduate project assistant for the American Historical Association’s Career Diversity Initiative at the University of New Mexico. Today she shares some important lessons from her work with Erstwhile. For the last three years, the History Department at the University of New Mexico has been one of four pilot programs participating…
Erstwhile is back from our holiday break! This week Sara Porterfield reflects on her experience at the American Historical Association’s annual conference and the relationship between academic and non-academic careers and historians. The American Historical Association (AHA) held its annual conference in Denver over the first weekend of 2017, complete with single-digit temperatures and a foot of…
Erstwhile contributor Rebecca Kennedy reflects on the value of reading fiction, with a reading list for the summer days ahead. Last Friday spring arrived in Vermont. The sun was shining, buds were emerging on the trees, flowering bulbs were making their first appearance, and a cool northerly wind was blowing off of Lake Champlain reminding us…
On the hundred and second anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, Erstwhile editor Graeme Pente reflects on memory and class at the site, which he visited last month. The plain stretches to the east—to the west, the hills from which the miners extracted coal. Nestled at one of the canyon mouths stands the monument to…
Erstwhile editor Sam Bock reflects on the burdens of knowledge and the academic’s obligations while on vacation. I’m writing this piece while I recover from the jet lag of my return flight from Maui. I am lucky enough to have spent eight days relaxing there in the Hawaiian sun with my family who were there celebrating my…
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…
Erstwhile’s Sara Porterfield reports on the first annual Fool for a Day Award presented by the Center of the American West and the nonstop laughter at the awards ceremony. On Wednesday evening Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor at The New Yorker magazine, received CU Boulder Center of the American West‘s inaugural Fool for a Day Award. Along with providing…
In the second installment of our alt-ac series, Erstwhile’s Alessandra Link chats with Dr. Patricia Marroquin Norby, Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Dr. Norby describes her position at the Center, dispels common myths about alt-ac work, and offers advice for graduate students…
This week, friend of the blog, Travis R. May (Ph.D. student, University of Colorado Boulder), talks Disneyland and the exoticization of the tropics. Just ahead, a rickety wooden bridge crosses a narrow stream, and the footpath beyond leads into a primitive village of wattle-and-daub buildings crowned with high thatched roofs. Tropical birdcalls and animal growls echo…
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