This week, many of the emails we have received from UHA members have included sighs of relief–we’ve heard reports that classes are done, final exams have been administered, grading is complete, and the academic year has officially drawn to a close. The editors of The Metropole wish you all a relaxing and productive summer, in equal measure. In case you missed it in the chaos of end-of-semester work, we’ve rounded up recent news and blog posts for you to catch up on:

This week on the blog, recently-minted Ph.D. Barry Goldberg described his fascinating research on Jewish-Puerto Rican relations on the Lower East Side and offered up some newly published books on New York City’s history that he’s excited to read now that his dissertation is done. As part of our Metropolis of the Month coverage of Mexico City, we also posted travelogues that share two first-time visitors’ impressions, through text and especially via photographs, of the Distrito Federal.

Over on the UHA website, several new opportunities have been posted to the “News” section. Notably, Columbia University invites applications for a tenured position to fill the Bernard Hirschhorn Professorship of Urban Studies. We have also recently posted CFP’s for the CityLAB V Summer School, the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius and the Gerda Henkel Foundation Summer School, and the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.

And on the web this week:

New York Times Magazine‘s Talk Column features UHA President Elect and Pulitzer Prize winner Heather Ann Thompson this week! Thompson concluded the interview with this powerful statement:

Sometimes I hear from people who have served time who say that prison was a place where they could finally get help, and that has been hard for me to process. I realized that one reason that’s the case with a lot of people is because it’s an institution and, for some people, they actually have health care for the first time, or housing for the first time. That’s what’s so powerfully sad about this whole story: It isn’t that we don’t know how to help people, but that we continue to do it through a prison, as opposed to other institutions. It could be so much better.

For the PBS Newshour’s weekly series, Making Sen$e, correspondent Paul Solmon reported from Columbia, SC–the city hosting the 2018 Urban History Association Biennial Conference–on why men are avoiding feminized jobs and industries.

Frontline investigates affordable housing.

And the tweet of the week:

One thing is to study history and another to live it. We are in very strange times.

— Toni Salazar L. (@MexHistorian) May 9, 2017