The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
Although our deep dives into the histories of New Orleans and Mexico City revealed how race, gender, and class affected the lived experience of urban residents, our coverage of Seattle was especially focused on the “alternative”–Seattle residents living in opposition to socially agreed upon norms or fighting for the expansion of these norms to include […]
Read More
“[T]here really never will be another Silicon Valley,” Margaret O’Mara wrote in 2008, “the Valley remains a truly unique ecosystem for technological innovation, with specialized niches and decades‐old interpersonal networks. However, it’s no longer the only game in town. The people and firms of the Valley are part of a global supply chain in which […]
Read MoreRebecca Scofield Assistant Professor of American History University of Idaho Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently completing my book project, tentatively titled Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringe of the American West, which investigates various marginalized rodeo communities over the course of the twentieth century. My project asks how […]
Read More
In his 2003 work, The Contradiction of American Capital Punishment, University of California law professor Franklin E. Zimring suggested that a correlation existed between lynchings and capital punishment; states with more of the former participated at higher rates in the latter. Zimring’s statistics, Elaine Cassel argued, “should give pause to anyone who believes that the […]
Read More
Seattle has long been connected to cutting edge technology: Boeing’s aerospace dominance, Seattle’s 1962 World Fair, and more recently the rise of Microsoft and Amazon. The ascent of “digital Seattle” was arguably best captured in two books; Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews on Microsoft in Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself […]
Read More
New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana more generally, are often held up as the worst examples of policing and criminal justice. It’s where the Angola 3 were incarcerated, alongside Zulu Whitmore, as political prisoners. It’s where Amnesty International has focused much of its anti-carceral state activism. Angola often gets held up as “a modern […]
Read MorePeter Siskind, Ph.D. Assistant Professor & Chair, Department of Historical & Political Studies, Arcadia University Executive Director, Urban History Association Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’ve been exploring the politics of development in the cities, suburbs, and recreational vacationlands of the post-World War II northeast corridor from Boston to Washington, […]
Read More
In a 2014 interview, indie rock malcontent Stephen Malkmus reflected on 1990s nostalgia. “It’s a time that seems romantic to people now, whereas at the time, it seemed like a cynical era,” he told the magazine. “There were all these worries about selling out and the Man and corporate rock and irony and sincerity. But […]
Read MoreThis week on The Metropole, we traveled from prisons in Paris to Buenos Aires and Brazil, then northwest to Gay Seattle and back eastwards to the Chrysler Village neighborhood of Chicago. We hope you enjoyed reading about poisoners and policing in seventeenth century France, the uniquely local form of LGBTQ activism that developed in twentieth-century […]
Read MoreThis is the inaugural post in a series highlighting urban and suburban public history projects. The Chrysler Village History Project has its origins in the spring semester of 2013, when a group of history graduate students from Loyola University Chicago nominated the Chrysler Village neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side to the National Register of Historic […]
Read More
The Metropole 