Boxing & Urban Decline: Community Development & Urban Revitalization in Early 20th-Century Winnipeg

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Matthew McKeown Third places are spaces people go to get away from work and home life. These spaces are vital for connecting community members and essential for urban renewal. Recently, there have been arguments about the decline of third places.[1] […]

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Circumventing the Past: Navigating Around the Harbor Through the East Boston Tunnel

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Genna Kane Bostonians grumbled and complained when the Sumner Tunnel closed again in the Summer of 2024, demonstrating the significance of underwater connections to East Boston. The City of Boston annexed East Boston in 1836, but the harbor strained East […]

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Connect! With the Graduate Student Blogging Contest Entries

It is September, and here at The Metropole that means it is time to publish entries to the Graduate Student Blogging Contest. Now in its eighth year, the contest is intended to encourage students to write pieces for a public-facing, online platform and share their research with a broad audience. Beginning Thursday and extending into […]

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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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