Sense and Scene

June 6, 2022.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Avigail Oren We decided to change up the theme of this year’s Graduate Student Blogging Contest because we wanted to encourage storytelling. Graduate coursework and advising generally prepares historians to write persuasive, evidence-based arguments, but only some programs and advisors emphasize the elements of narrative—scene, character, dialogue, voice, style—that can make a piece of […]

An Ode to Saying No

February 2, 2022.Reading time 18 minutes.

By Avigail Oren We are reprising our Month of Academic Odes on the The Metropole because, as it turns out, winter 2021 was not the hoped-for end of the pandemic. Here we are, in February 2022, with all the more reason to embrace the positive (as long as it isn’t on a COVID test). Last […]

UHA Testimonials 2021: Neumann and Winling

September 23, 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

This blog post is the third in a series of posts supporting the UHA’s inaugural Membership Drive. These posts will introduce you to some of the many amazing scholars, activists, teachers, and others in the UHA’s membership community, as well as highlight the role played by the UHA in the lives and careers of its […]

Member of the Week: Marta Gutman

July 29, 2021.Reading time 13 minutes.

Marta Gutman You wear a lot of hats! What are your many and varied affiliations? I am Interim Dean and Professor of Architecture (History and Theory) at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of the City University of New York, and Professor of Art History and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Graduate Center […]

An Outsize Impact — A Review of Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community

January 25, 2021.Reading time 13 minutes.

Martin, Sean and John J. Grabowski, eds. Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Reviewed by Avigail Oren Despite having lived in Pittsburgh for nearly a decade, I love Cleveland. This is anathema in my adopted home, though the source of animosity between the two cities […]

Radical Movements in 1960s L.A. — A Review of Set the Night on Fire

January 11, 2021.Reading time 28 minutes.

Jon Wiener and Mike Davis. Set the Night on Fire: L. A. in the Sixties. New York: Verso Books, 2020. Reviewed by Ryan Reft Anyone who chooses to focus on Southern California history must consult the work of Mike Davis. Full stop. Keep in mind you don’t necessarily have to agree with Davis, but you […]

Best Coping and Self Care

December 17, 2020.Reading time 6 minutes.

It would be difficult to identify two words more in use this year than “coping” and “self-care.” Some UHA members travel the Norwegian route embracing hygge interior design to attain some level of “coziness,” though 2020 conventional wisdom says Danish Hygge is tired but Swedish Hygge is wired. Others, pound Ben and Jerry’s. In the […]

This neighborhood isn’t for you anymore: A Conversation about WESA’s new podcast, land and power

December 9, 2020.Reading time 24 minutes.

By Avigail Oren On November 16, Pittsburgh NPR affiliate WESA dropped a five-part podcast called Land and Power, about a fight for housing in the city’s historically Black neighborhood of East Liberty. In 2015, residents of the Penn Plaza apartment buildings found out they’d have to leave their homes to make way for new development. […]

Best of TV/Film

December 8, 2020.Reading time 12 minutes.

For decades, Hollywood viewed television and film actors the way the public thinks about the two houses of Congress. Like television, the House of Representatives, though important, lacks the august credibility of the Senate. In entertainment, the top talent and best quality flowed into film. Yet, since the alleged “Golden Era” of television — which […]

Sound and Narrative Fury? Best Podcast of 2020

December 3, 2020.Reading time 9 minutes.

You know how newsletters in your email from prominent journalists (Clare Malone, Dave Weigel, Anne Helen Peterson, etc. etc.), while all the rage (as the kids in their mid-60s like to say), are really just a veiled return to the sort of chain emails that dominated the internets early years, but now in a more […]