History in the public interest from the Lepage Center at Villanova University
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First year of programming complete
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The start of summer marks the end of the Lepage Center’s inaugural year of programming.
Over the past academic year we’ve brought historical perspective and scholarship to bear on important societal issues such as
fake news
,
endless war
,
monument debates
, the
environment
, the
50th anniversary of 1968
, the
Middle East
,
race and gender
and more. We’ve hosted a
workshop on podcasting
, a
History Career Day
for students, and launched our “
History Briefings for Business Leaders
” series. And we've created an
online resource
to decipher good history from bad on the web.
Missed any events from this year? A
list
is on our website, selected videos are available online (
here
,
here
,
and
here
) and highlights are on Twitter at the hashtag
#LepageAtVU
.
Our public programming will be on hold for the summer. We’ll return in the fall with fresh events that bring historical perspective to contemporary issues. Stay tuned to our
website
and
newsletter
for announcements.
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Our blog,
Hindsights,
will continue to publish throughout the summer
. Our latest posts include:
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The U.S. and North Korea appear headed for a historic summit. While media focus largely on the the nations’ leaders, Villanova historian Catherine Kerrison writes that it's important to recognize the role that women have played in thawing the relations between the two heads of state. These actions resemble those of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters—and come at considerable costs to women who serve their fathers’ political legacies.
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Anniversaries are meant to call attention to particular events and issues. Continuing our examination of the 50
th
anniversary of 1968, historian Sarah Snyder writes that although 1968 was an anniversary year for the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, chartered 20 years earlier, few people noticed—or cared. Amidst other priorities, the human rights anniversary flew largely under the radar, evincing the limits of anniversary celebrations and how fruits of such celebrations may not emerge until many years later.
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In recollections of the events at Stonewall Inn, the involvement of the mafia has been carefully omitted. Lepage Center History Communication Fellow Claire Hoffman examines the mob's role in the riots at Stonewall and how memories of that seminal event have been reconstructed to exclude them.
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Videos from our “
1968 Philly and the World
”
event, co-hosted with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, are now on the C-SPAN website:
- Music 1968 – Featuring Larry Magid, co-founder of Philadelphia’s Electric Factory, along with journalist George Miller and historian Steve Garabedian, the panel discusses the roots of rock n’ roll, its expression in the late 1960s, the truths and myths surrounding hippies and politics, and what it was like to share a hotel room with Jimi Hendrix.
- Sports 1968 – Featuring Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer, along with historians Thomas Mogan and Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, the panel examines the professional and collegiate sports scenes in 1968 in the U.S., Europe and the Olympics, touching on issues of race, politics, protest, and the role of sports journalism and the media.
- War 1968 – Moderated by Lepage Center faculty director Paul Steege and featuring historians Marc Gallicchio, Katherine Sibley and Nicholas Molnar, the panel uses a letter written by a soldier in Vietnam to his family as a starting point to examine the effects of the war in 1968, the stories about the war told by the press, protestors, the government, and soldiers, and the lingering legacies of the war in Philadelphia, for veterans, and for families.
- Protest 1968 – Featuring five scholars of diverse backgrounds and research areas, this panel examines the continuities and distinctions among global protest movements in the U.S., Germany, and Mexico.
The videos are part of C-SPAN’s coverage of 1968, including their special Washington Journal series
1968: America in Turmoil
.
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Last year we had an idea: to allow one undergraduate student and one graduate student to work with the Lepage Center throughout the year sharpening their skills in communicating historical scholarship to public audiences.
One year later, our amazing first-year fellows were instrumental to the success of our events, blogs, social media, and forthcoming podcasts. Here's what they said about their experiences:
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Maggie Strolle:
"I wanted to be a Lepage Center Fellow because after graduate school I wanted to go into the field of Public History. I really enjoyed my time as a Fellow. It was a wonderful opportunity. I learned that writing for general consumption is different than writing for a graduate history paper, and saw just how much background work goes into a program or creating a podcast."
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Claire Hoffman:
"I was immediately drawn to the Lepage Center because it tied together two of my main interests, historical research and communications. Our events featured historians and experts from a wide variety of backgrounds. This provided a greater depth of understanding, and signaled to me that having a wide variety of interests and skills would only serve to benefit me in my future aspirations."
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Read more about what our Fellows accomplished
on the Fellowships page
of our website. N
ew Fellows will join us in the fall.
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Call for proposals, history and policy at the Luskin Center (UCLA)
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Our partner organization on the West Coast, the
Luskin Center for History and Policy at UCLA, has issued a call for research proposals at the intersection of history and policy. The center seeks to support collaborative projects that will use historical analysis to address contemporary challenges. More information can be found on the
Luskin Center website.
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What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to
lepage@villanova.edu. We appreciate every email.
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We’d love to share other news with you. Check out the
CLAS Newsroom, Villanova's news hub for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, for what's going on around the College.
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Villanova University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
800 E. Lancaster Ave.
Villanova, PA 19085
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Comments, questions or ideas are always welcome at
lepage@villanova.edu
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