History in the public interest from the Lepage Center at Villanova University
First year of programming complete
The start of summer marks the end of the Lepage Center’s inaugural year of programming.
 
The Center launched its programming in September 2017 with an event on Fake News and Fake History .
 
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.
Blog continues
Our blog, Hindsights, will continue to publish throughout the summer . Our latest posts include:
North Korea
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.

Human Rights, 1968
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.

The Mob and the Movement
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.

C-SPAN links are live
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 .
 
Want more 1968? We’ve collected links from around the Web related to the 50 th anniversary (scroll to the bottom).
Goodbye to our Fellows
We recently said goodbye to our two outstanding inaugural History Communication Fellows, Maggie Strolle and Claire Hoffman .
 
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:
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."



 
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."
Read more about what our Fellows accomplished on the Fellowships page of our website. N ew Fellows will join us in the fall.
Call for proposals, history and policy at the Luskin Center (UCLA)
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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