Announcing The Eighth Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest

Connection The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest exists to encourage and train graduate students to blog about history—as a way to teach beyond the classroom, market their scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year’s theme is Connection. We are looking for blog posts that highlight connections that occur within, […]

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Announcing the Winner of the Seventh Annual UHA/The Metropole Grad Student Blogging Contest

In order to further the ability of emerging historians to use online platforms to teach beyond the classroom, market scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities, The Metropole/UHA established the Graduate Student Blogging Contest in 2017. This year, our theme was Stumble; we asked students to submit pieces about efforts in urbanism that have stumbled […]

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Grad Student Blogging Contest 2023 Roundup

For those of us over forty, and particularly for folks from the middle, few bands loom as large as The Replacements, the greatest band that never was. Paul Westerberg and his bandmates stumbled their way across the country, releasing one quality, ramshackle album after another, full of pathos, humor, and grief, all while undermining their […]

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Yan Zongo: A Research Note on Accra’s Strangers

The ninth and final post from our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is from Fauziyatu Moro. She writes about how stumbling onto the important mementos of immigrants, while doing fieldwork in Accra, led her to develop her thesis topic, which broadens understanding of the lives of migrants by looking at their leisure activities. To see […]

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Annexation Politics & Manufacturing Blight in a Black St. Louis Suburb

The seventh entry in this year’s Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Bridget Laramie Kelly, who won last year’s blogging contest. In this year’s entry, she writes about how a historic Black suburb was perceived by wealthier white residents as a “stumbling block” in the way of protecting and increasing property values. To see all […]

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Stumbling into Submission: How Real Estate and Finance Capital Conquered New York City

The theme for our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is “Stumble.” Our sixth entrant, Katelin Penner, discusses how leaders in real estate and finance forced New York City government to stumble into a relationship with them that has led the city to subsidize private development projects while reducing public services that support working-class residents. To […]

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The Neighborhood Nuisance: One Woman’s Crusade to Shape Brooklyn

For our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, we asked for stories about projects that faced “stumbling blocks.” There were a multitude of them placed in the path of Mabel E. Macomber, a Progressive Era playground advocate, written about by Alexandra Miller in our fifth entry. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out […]

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Bound Aid

Our fourth author in the 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, Allie Goodman, describes the experience of a young woman and her family “stumbling through” efforts to obtain assistance provided by a settlement house but subject to conditions, including surveillance and extralegal work agreements. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out our round […]

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“Jackrabbiting” Away from Urban Spaces

The third entry in our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Julie Haltom. She writes about the myriad of stumbling blocks faced by mid-twentieth-century homesteaders in Southern California’s deserts, and the short- and long-term ramifications of the Bureau of Land Management’s Small Tract Lease program. To see all entries from this year’s contest check […]

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