From the Bomb to the Beat: How Civil Defense Turned to Urban Unrest in Cold War America

This is the fourth entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.”  By Heather N. Jahrling White police in white helmets.  Jimmy Breslin spotted them in Harlem in July 1964, as protests over the fatal police shooting of fifteen-year-old James Powell spiraled into six days of fiery disorder: “The cops were everywhere, four […]

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Turning the Camera on the City: Women, Youth, and a Media Revolution in Milwaukee

This is the third entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Maria Rose Francis During a community-led walk through Milwaukee’s Midtown neighborhood in the summer of 2023, Ms. Betty Glosson, Ms. Talibah Mateen-Hooper, and Prof. Portia Cobb brought an earlier landscape back into view. At one corner, Ms. Betty recalled neighborhood efforts […]

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The Rain God in Monrovia, and in Mérida

This is the second entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Vanessa Christman I must have driven my husband insane when we first tuned into Apple TV’s The Studio. Instead of enjoying the comedic hijinks, I went heavy on the pause button to examine the fictional Continental Studios headquarters. A tour guide […]

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Grassroots vs. Burned Grass: A History of Wheat, Pollution, and Advocacy on the Palouse

This is the first entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Sarah Daisy Amador Farmers in the Palouse, a pastoral region encompassing southeastern Washington and central Idaho, burned 11,057 acres of Kentucky bluegrass stubble after harvest on September 12, 1994. The following morning, an acute asthma attack claimed the life of […]

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10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest!

Revolution The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest is marking its tenth anniversary this year! The blogging contest exists to support graduate students in exploring short form, publicly oriented history writing as a way to teach beyond the classroom, develop marketable skills, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year’s theme is […]

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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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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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The Grad Student Blogging Contest 2025!

Light The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest, now in its ninth year, exists to support graduate students in exploring short form, publicly-oriented writing in history as a way to teach beyond the classroom, develop marketable skills, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year’s theme is Light We are looking for […]

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Congratulations to Our 2024 Graduate Student Blogging Contest Winner!

Once again, we had a record number of entries in our graduate student blogging contest! Our 2024 theme, “Connection,” inspired submission by twelve students whose work intersects with urban history. Online publications such as The Metropole can provide an outlet for writing that allows for creativity and experimentation, both in content and how information is […]

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