The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Matthew Adair For many Americans, summer is a season of travel. The ritual of leaving home for somewhere more relaxing (or invigorating) has a long history. Since at least antiquity, “escaping the city” has been a common tradition among the […]
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By J. Mark Souther Few things embody the freedom of American life more than mobility, and perhaps no other form of transportation, for better and worse, has defined mobility in the United States like cars. Yet in the era of Jim Crow, mobility for Black families could be dangerous, even deadly; hence the need for […]
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Rose, Mark H. and Roger Biles. A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022. Reviewed by David Goodwin As public concern over the COVID-19 pandemic shifts from a guiding fear to a collective memory, American urban centers struggle to reimagine and restructure themselves to an […]
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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 […]
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Review: American Splendor (New York: HBO Films, 2003). Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini By Evan Ash In a middle-of-the-night lymphoma-induced delirium, Cleveland everyman Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) asks his wife Joyce (Hope Davis): “Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in […]
Read MoreJacob Bruggeman University of Cambridge Darwin College @jacob_bruggeman Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My current research is on the construction of narratives about economic inequality in the long 20th century. For my M.Phil. dissertation, I am examining how Margaret Thatcher’s descriptions of economic inequality drew upon Victorian narratives about poverty. […]
Read MoreRyan and I put out a call on Twitter asking what people were looking forward to at the upcoming SACRPH conference in Cleveland, and the response was crickets. I’m concerned that urbanists are insufficiently excited for what will most certainly be a great weekend! So here are the five things I’m most looking forward to… […]
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By Avigail Oren On November 7, 1967, the citizens of Cleveland elected Carl B. Stokes mayor. Stokes became the first black mayor of a major American city, a considerable feat in a majority-white metropolis. During his two terms as mayor, from 1968-1972, Stokes represented all Clevelanders and sought to universally improve the city’s neighborhoods, while […]
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The Metropole 