Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
Last week I mentioned rather cryptically that I had exciting news that I could not mention. But this week, I can, because my news embargo has lifted!
A major project that I'm a part of has gotten funded for what is for a historian quite a lot of money. It has a provocative name and everything: "Reinventing Civil Defense". Read the post if you are curious, but it is a really interesting fusion of history, policy, and science, with the goal of trying to forge some new directions in the area of risk communication with regards to nuclear weapons. Check it out! I am super pumped and it has been a long time in the making.
So as a historian, I could make a point about the social murder of homosociality in the west around 1900. I could talk about the sexualization of intimacy. The "muscular Christianity", Teddy Roosevelt frontier mentality/mythos, and imperialist conqueror of nature as well as people reinforcement of masculinity as opposed to a mandated fragile femininity--rising out of an anxiety that women, too, were seizing outdoorsy, physical, rough-and-tumble opportunities. I could get really academic and talk about how past society disrupts modern ideas of gender and sex in a way that is inherently queer ("always already queered").
Or I could just link you to American Girl Dolls Ranked by Gayness (and why this is awesome), which is absolutely everything you are imagining it to be.
Oh! Also:
In honor of a certain pop culture event happening this weekend, I wrote a thing:
When burning alive doesn't even make the list...
Happy Bastille Day!
In honor of this glorious event, enjoy this Tweetstorm about how the newspaper headlines for the French Revolution's major events would have looked in the age of Twitter.
As to the definition of “moron”—this means a high-grade mental defective; definitely below the normal level of intelligence, yet in no sense a drivelling idiot, & sometimes capable of useful effort in a given direction. Taking a the normal the average type which can adapt itself to the community with ease & succeed moderately in a modest way, it is found that the number of morons in the United States has so increased that they now form almost a majority of the population. Most frankly peasant stocks are moronic en masse, & injudicious immigration privileges have brought about the deplorable condition here noted; a condition chiefly manifest in the increase of violent crime & reign of underworld gangs in the larger cities. There is no remedy for what has already occurred, but much can in future be done by applying rigid intelligence tests to candidates for admission & naturalisation.
Been meditating on this passage. This is from a letter from Lovecraft to his aunt Lillian Clark, from his brief period living in New York City - pretty much his personal nadir of race relations; stuck in an unfamiliar city while broke, with no real prospects for a job, rubbing elbows with folks he had grown up being taught were beneath him on the social ladder, his marriage falling apart... Two Broke Girls it ain't. Nor was he alone in his general xenophobia regarding immigrants or "native foreigners" like Jews and African Americans, who while acknowledged as Americans were often not seen as Americans; they were still seen as a people apart. Robert E. Howard would add in a letter to Lovecraft:
Once it was the highest honor to say: “I am an American.” It still is, because of the great history that lies behind the phrase; but now any Jew, Polack or Wop, spawned in some teeming ghetto and ignorant of or cynical toward American ideals, can strut and swagger and blatantly assert his Americanship and is accepted on the same status as a man whose people have been in the New World for three hundred years.
I would limit immigration in this manner: I would open the doors wide to all people of the British Isles. Let the other nations howl about discrimination. Why should we not discriminate? Did the Italians, the Russians, the Liths settle and conquer and build this country? Did the ancient Greek colonies welcome Egyptians and Phoenicians as citizens, or did they proudly remain Hellenes? Why should we open the doors to strangers? Britons settled this land and I would always welcome Britons. The rest, with exceptions among the higher class Scandinavians and French, I would bar completely.
Well — I can’t say that I’ve added anything to the greatness of the nation, but I at least come of a breed that helped build up the country, which is more than can be said today by any number of Hebraic-Slavic-Latins running around and calling themselves “Americans”.
Howard and Lovecraft's letters on immigration are interesting reading, for how much they show about the thought of the era, but one of the hallmarks of both men's line of thought is not just racial or ethnic division but class consciousness. Lovecraft in his definition of "morons" singles out the "peasant stock" (and Howard does too, in other letters) and there's a definite hallmark of class awareness and class division in their letters, separating themselves off as...if not the elite in any sense, than at least as the rightful inheritors of being classed as "Americans."
It reminds me very much of the idea in the pre-War South, that as mean and poor as a white man could be, he could at least look down on a black man and call him "boy." I won't say that is exactly the mentality of either of the pulpsters here - both of whom could be generous and polite to a fault - but I do wonder how much, in some case, it was a personal or cultural reaction to the challenge of identity that came from the great American Melting Pot.
I think every lab that does analysis of artifacts from excavations should require a punching bag. That way, you can take out all of your frustration on past excavators who failed to adequately document their work, label their artifacts, clean things, etc. I know that our lab at Los Guachimontones could use one. You would think excavations done in the 21st century would not make so many awful mistakes, but you would be wrong.
I don't know where to ask, so I'll post here!
In one of those special threads on /r/askhistorians , there was a Trivia one, about happy endings, happy moments, etc. This one was about one Japanese man and an American family. I can't remember the thread, or the names. :<
If someone saved it, I would love to find that thread.
I will likely end up asking this as its own question, and even sending out PMs to relevant parties, but still:
What are some good resources to find out what people in Early Modern Europe (and England specifically) thought about the Moon? I'm looking for information about how it figured in the thought of natural philosophers/scientists, authors, clergy, even the general public. If John Dee, in particular, ever wrote anything about the Moon, this would be especially helpful.
All of this is for a component of a small creative project I'm working on, so there's nothing especially rigorous at stake, but I'm still quite curious!
A month ago, I asked this question which u/chocolatepot answered. However, there's one little mystery left. Chocolatepot said "I've never come across (women not drinking red wine) as a piece of Regency etiquette - either in writing of the period or in writing on the period." So my question is, have any of you come across the claim that regency women didn't red wine? Is it an outdated idea from decades ago or is it recent pop history nonsense?
Thanks!
Are there any great books on the economics of past societies, especially the medieval era? I ask because I am getting interested in the medieval era and I want to learn more about the rise of trade (if there was any) between different societies and trade routes, logistics etc. I'd like to learn what different regions were famous for producing and how sensitive technology was protected.
It's just a passing interest for now. But if there is substantive work done, I think I could enjoy reading up about it for a long while.
What happen to vets from wars like ww1 in the japanese internment camps as well as familys of thoughts serving in ww2 in the internment camps? and how were they treated?
You say "if you found a discovery in your back yard", what if you found something but noone wants it to be known?
Floating Feature Ideas Needed
So last month, we ran a slate of Floating Features, which went very well. We want to try and keep them going with more regularity as everyone seems to enjoy them. They give everyone a nice, open canvas to write about, and also provide a lot of interesting reading material.
What we want, though, is topics! You can get a sense of what we go for from the [past Floating Features'(http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/floating), but generally speaking, we want them to be open ended prompts which anyone, from any discipline, should be able to contribute to. Unlike Tuesday Trivia, which generally concentrates on a narrower, tangible topic, the Floating Features are geared toward broader themes, so suggestions should reflect that (although narrow topics suggested might get stuck on the TT schedule, so if that is all you have, don't hold back).