The Watergate and Washington, DC, 1946-1975

June 14, 2023.Reading time 32 minutes.

Fifty years ago this September, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson sat poolside at the Watergate with a young Pat Buchanan, who, according to Thompson, was “one of the few people in the Nixon administration with a sense of humor.” The two men drank beers while gossiping about Tex Colson and discussing the nature of political […]

Promise and Peril in Post-1968 Washington, DC — “When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital”

May 9, 2023.Reading time 12 minutes.

While not completely ignored among urbanists, for a city of its size and significance, Washington, DC—or at least its post-1968 incarnation—remains an under-historicized metropolis. To be fair, historians like Scott Berg and J. D. Dickey have tackled its beginnings in the nineteenth century. James H. Whyte, Ronald Johnson, Carol Gelderman, Sharon Harley, and others have […]

Transcribing Labor: A New Transcription Campaign Focusing on the AFL Records at the Library of Congress.

April 26, 2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) first took shape in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it did so as waves of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America washed over the United States’ shores, bringing increasing ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to the nation. However, immigration intersected with large scale industrialization, and […]

Edo City-State & Fractal Design

March 30, 2023.Reading time 22 minutes.

Editorial note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Likam Kyanzaire Benin City sits at the eastern end of Nigeria, not far from its commercial capital Lagos. The site is home to the […]

A Bird’s-Eye View of the Colonial City: A.G. Vorderman’s “Bataviasche Vogels” (1882-1885)

March 21, 2023.Reading time 16 minutes.

Editorial note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. Please also note that in this piece the ninenteenth-century Dutch spellings of the source material are used here for all species names—both Latin binomial and […]

Museum Mice and Pizza Rats: Evolution of the City

March 15, 2023.Reading time 34 minutes.

Editor’s note: This post part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Nuala Caomhánach The concerned look on their faces was enough to make me turn around and go home. Standing at the doorway of my shared […]

Astronomy on the Flats: How the Moons of Mars and the Death of a President Altered the Late Nineteenth-Century Washington, DC, Landscape

March 8, 2023.Reading time 40 minutes.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Vincent Femia Simon Newcomb often arose from his bed in the middle of the night to walk two miles to the Naval Observatory grounds. […]

Science and the City: An Overview and Bibliography

March 1, 2023.Reading time 69 minutes.

A sepia-tone image showing a lab with two large, curtained windows, a clock hanging on the wall between them, and desks dotted with lab equipment. A desk in the foreground has a tray with a rabbit-sized animal lying belly-up. It is set in a decorative frame and has a black university stamp on the lower right-hand corner

Editor’s note: This is the first post in our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Can Gümüş-İspir and Marianne Dhenin When Egyptian engineer and administrator Ali Mubarak traveled to Paris in the 1860s, he took a much-anticipated tour […]

Raised by the Rust Belt: The Power of Emplaced Humanities

February 22, 2023.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Katharine G. Trostel and Valentino L. Zullo The work of the Rust Belt Humanities Institute at Ursuline College is rooted in imagining and co-creating new futures. As two native Clevelanders (raised by the Rust Belt) teaching at a local institution—the majority of our students are firmly anchored in the greater Cleveland region—we occupy a […]

The Metropole Bookshelf: Who Was That Major Deegan Anyway?

February 8, 2023.Reading time 14 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Rebecca Bratspies The Major Deegan Expressway is many people’s first experience of New York City. Travelers crossing the George Washington Bridge take the Major Deegan to the […]