The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
The original The Valley of the Shadow website launched thirty years ago and is often cited as among the first digital humanities projects on the web. Two communities in the Great Valley, one in the North and one in the South, are documented in a database of public records, newspapers, correspondence, images, maps, and other […]
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“The Windy City,” “The City of Big Shoulders,” and even “Second City” have long been nicknames ascribed to one of the nation’s premier, but often overlooked, metropolises: Chicago. The capital of the Midwest has served as home for any number of immigrant groups over the course of the twentieth century – Poles, Czechs, and Irish […]
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Riismandel, Kyle. Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture 1975-2001. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. Reviewed by Davy Knittle In July of 1981, six-year-old Adam Walsh was kidnapped while his mother shopped at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida. Adam’s remains were found two weeks later in a canal just over 130 […]
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Just a reminder to graduate students to submit a piece to the UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest, one of our favorite annual features. Where else can you reach a wide audience of urban historians eager to read about the innovative new directions current students are pushing urban history? Submission deadline is July 15, 2023. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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