Congratulations to Our 2025 Graduate Student Blogging Contest Winner!

This year’s contest, The Metropole’s ninth, saw entries that considered the topic of “Light” from widely ranging perspectives, and both of this year’s entrants drew praise from the judges for “using the looseness of the blog format to make connections that might be harder in a more rule-bound academic article.” Alexandra Miller’s “Playing With Fire: […]

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Healing Wounds of Light: Birds, Cities and the Fast, Slow, and Forgotten Violence of Artificial Illumination

This post is an entry in our ninth annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest. This year’s theme is “Light.” By Charlotte Leib “Surely you’ve heard about the penguins,” behavioral ecologist Joanna Burger remarks. I am speaking with Burger, a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Rutgers, because I’ve reached an impasse—the historian’s equivalent of night. I’ve been […]

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UHA/NiCHE Collaborative Call for Papers: Urban and Environmental Dialogues

A NiCHE/Metropole Blog Series Proposal Deadline: October 24, 2025 Draft Deadline: December 1, 2025 Series Publication: January/February 2025 The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) and The Metropole – The Official Blog of the Urban History Association are soliciting submissions for Urban and Environmental Dialogues, a series that will explore how the environment-at-large and […]

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Playing with Fire: Pyrotechnic New York Youth at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This post is an entry in our ninth annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest. This year’s theme is “Light.” By Alexandra Miller BOOM! The sound of the explosion “Shook the houses broke Window panes and caused a great excitement among the respectable portion of the tenants” of the midtown Manhattan neighborhood around the corner of 56th […]

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UHA 2025: Tips for Engaging Tours

With UHA2025 just around the corner next month, historian Elaine Lewinnek, with assistance from Elsa DeVienne, offers some tips of the trade for conducting walking tours and tours generally. Sign up for LA tours at this year’s UHA here! By Elaine Lewinnek The spatialized nature of urban history often means we end up leading tours […]

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UHA2025: Advice for Attending Academic Conferences

Editor’s note: With UHA2025 just around the corner next month, historians Elaine Lewinnek and Daniela Sheinin offer some tips for getting the most out of an academic conference. See here for the conference program and the various tours available. By Elaine Lewinnek & Daniela Sheinin Academic conferences can feel intimidating. At our first academic conferences, […]

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The National Chicano Moratorium Anti-Vietnam War March and Ruben Salazar Inquest: 55 Years Later

Protesters marching on Whittier Boulevard at the National Chicano Moratorium Anti-Vietnam War March, August 29, 1970 in Los Angeles

By Ryan Reft It was late afternoon on August 29, 1970, when Rosalío Muñoz, chairman of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC) stood before thousands of people under a hot southern California summer sun. He was briefly triumphant, having stewarded the nation’s largest ever Mexican American protest and the largest by a single ethnic group, […]

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Railway Infrastructure and Memory Erasure in Mexico City: A Walking Interview with Guillermo Guajardo

Editor’s note: The interview below was conducted as part of the project Urban Palisades: Technology in the Making of Santa Fe, Mexico City, directed by Diana Montaño and David Pretel. Additionally, this interview was carried out in Spanish and previously published at Artefactos. Revista De Estudios Filosóficos Sobre Ciencia Y Tecnología, 13(2), 309–333. By Reynaldo […]

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Graduate Student Blog Contest Extended!

Our Graduate Student Blog contest is underway! We’ve extended the submission date to Sunday, August 3, 2025. All the information below remains the same; check it out and send us your paper! Light The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest, now in its ninth year, exists to support graduate students in exploring short form, […]

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