An Ode to Students

February 9, 2021.Reading time 8 minutes.

By Allison Raven Of the many abstract nouns in the world, “injustice” is perhaps the one best suited for seventh graders. Middle schoolers in general have very profound senses of justice, and certainly know when they are experiencing an injustice in school. Homework: injustice. Uniforms: injustice. Ms. Raven counting them tardy when they intended to […]

“A New Jerusalem”–A Review of The City-State of Boston

February 8, 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

Peterson, Mark. The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Reviewed by Kristian Price Challenging the popular depiction of Boston as a “city upon a hill,” Mark Peterson sees the city as less a beacon of promise or righteousness than as mired in contradictions […]

B’more Authentic: Teaching Difficult History in the College Classroom

February 3, 2021.Reading time 6 minutes.

By Menika Dirkson I’ll never forget my first mentor in graduate school. He was a black man from Baltimore who taught African American History at a predominantly white institution for over twenty years. I first met Dr. Lawrence “Larry” Little when I took his course as an undergraduate student at Villanova University. I thought he […]

African Americans at St. Elizabeth’s — A Review of Madness in the City of Magnificent Expectations

February 2, 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

Summers, Martin. Madness in the City of Magnificent Expectations: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation’s Capital. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Reviewed by Debra Kram-Fernandez Madness in The City of Magnificent Expectations is concerned with the history of psychiatric care for Black, Brown, and White Americans suffering from serious and/or chronic […]

The Metropole’s Month of Academic Odes

February 1, 2021.Reading time 7 minutes.

I need not explain that we have all had A YEAR. That is pretty well established; we are feeling the relentlessness of this pandemic mentally, emotionally, and physically. So at The Metropole, we wanted to brighten up this season of darkness with a little gratitude practice. The phrase “gratitude practice” makes me reflexively cringe, because […]

The Hague Case: A Different View of Police Misbehavior in Pre-World War II America

January 28, 2021.Reading time 18 minutes.

By Donald W. Rogers, PhD During the winter and spring of 1937-1938, police officers clashed with members and supporters of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in streets and parks of Jersey City, New Jersey, manhandling demonstrators, punching a few, and bodily expelling others from city limits. Those notorious instances of police coercion contributed to the […]

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 […]

Early American Urban Protests — A Review of Boston’s Massacre

January 19, 2021.Reading time 13 minutes.

Hinderaker, Eric. Boston’s Massacre. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Review by Bob Carey In this engaging study, Eric Hinderaker offers a masterclass in how to peel back the layers of data, scholarship, and propaganda to understand what we call the Boston Massacre. Such an approach, inviting views of a fraught […]

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 […]

Disciplining the City: Scholarship and the Carceral State Year in Review 2020

January 4, 2021.Reading time 42 minutes.

By Charlotte Rosen and Matthew Guariglia The year 2020 saw one of the largest, if not the largest, protest movement in the history of the United States. Prompted by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade–on top of too many others over the past decades–a Black-led movement against racial state and state-sanctioned […]