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Posted by: Andrew Breiner
The following is a guest post by Julia Azari, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Marquette University and 2019 Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center. Partisanship shapes American politics, and, indeed, many parts of everyday life. Americans are increasingly negative about the possibility of their children marrying someone …
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
When Drew Gilpin Faust – historian, former Harvard University president, and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War – accepted the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, she took some time to sit down with us to discuss the Library of …
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
In the fourth episode of our African American Passages podcast, former John W. Kluge Center Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Georgetown University history professor Adam Rothman goes in search of Adeline Henson, an African-American woman who makes an ephemeral appearance in the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Collections, through two photographs, a bill of sale, and a …
Posted in: History, Media & Communications, Visual & Performing Arts
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
In the second episode of African American Passages: Black Lives in the 19th Century, John W. Kluge Center Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Georgetown University history professor Adam Rothman looks at the story of Omar Ibn Said. Rothman is joined on the podcast by Mary-Jane Deeb, the Chief of the Library of Congress’s African and Middle …
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
The following is a guest post by L. Marvin Overby, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri and 2018-2019 Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center. During my fellowship at the Kluge Center I am researching a book with my University of Missouri colleague James Endersby. Tentatively …
Posted in: Government, History, Politics
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
During his time as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar here at the John W. Kluge Center, Georgetown University history professor Adam Rothman recorded an extraordinary series of podcasts. In the podcasts, Rothman examines documents from the Library of Congress’ manuscript collection relating to the lives of African-Americans in the 19th century. He found a number of …
Posted in: Culture & Society, History, Literature
Posted by: Adam Rothman
An unusual letter arrived in the mail for the Tennessee planter James K. Polk shortly after he won the 1844 presidential election. Written from Carrollton, Mississippi, and dated November 28, 1844, the letter began “My Dear Master” and was signed by “Blacksmith Harry.” Here’s what Harry wrote: Suffer your faithful survant Harry to say a …
Posted in: Africa, Culture & Society, History
Posted by: Andrew Breiner
While Adam Rothman, Georgetown University history professor and former Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Kluge Center, was at the Library, he had the opportunity to work on transcribing the Library of Congress’ Omar Ibn Said Collection, which was just released online. Ibn Said was an educated, wealthy man living in West Africa until he was …
Posted in: Africa, Culture & Society, History
Posted by: Stephen Houston
The association of directions with colors may be the oldest known set of philosophical ideas in the world, transmitted from ancient Asia to the Americas over 10,000 years ago. Obvious Concepts Some concepts come naturally to humans. In several ancient societies, the moon relates to a goddess, and logically so, for menstruation and lunar cycles …
Posted in: Culture & Society, History, Latin America, Visual & Performing Arts