Erstwhile guest contributor Kerri Clement (PhD student, CU Boulder) gives us her report on the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History that took place last week in Chicago. After attending last week’s American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) conference, I struggled with how to recap my experience at the 2017 meeting. This…
Erstwhile guest contributor Amelia Brackett (Ph.D. student, CU Boulder) considers the perplexing influence of identity in the practice of oral history. Unlike other historians, oral historians must consider how the outward manifestations of their identities and personas shape the conversations they can incite and, therefore, the evidence they can gather. Brackett shares some of her experiences…
This week, Erstwhile draws attention to an ongoing online encyclopedia project on the state of Colorado. A number of our editors have contributed entries to the encyclopedia. Contributing editor Graeme Pente produced the piece below on the history of Populism in the state. For more information on the Colorado Encyclopedia, please visit their website and explore the…
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…
On July 10th, 2015, members of a South Carolina Highway Patrol honor guard reeled down the Confederate flag from a pole in front of the statehouse. Ten thousand onlookers roared excitedly as the flag descended, some cheering “USA! USA! USA!” – a traditionally patriotic shout that took on new meaning when chanted at the flag representing the Confederate…
Erstwhile’s Sara Porterfield reflects on a summer spent researching the rivers she knows well and the valuable role personal experience plays in academic study. This year marked the first summer in over a decade that I did not spend days and nights floating on and sleeping next to the rivers of the Colorado River Basin. I…
Erstwhile contributing editor Alessandra Link reveals disturbing parallels between the present-day Dakota Access Pipeline controversy and the long history of covert corporate maneuvering in Indian Country. While mainstream media outlets focus on the legal conflict between the Standing Rock Sioux and the federal government, the oil company itself has slid beyond wide public recognition. Link…
Erstwhile editor Caroline Grego reflects on her dissertation research from the summer and explores the ways in which African Americans in the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands – the Lowcountry – understood the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893, a hurricane that killed thousands of African Americans. Meteorologists later estimated that the storm was…
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 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…
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