By James Mulholland (NHC Fellow, 2016–17) During the later decades of the eighteenth century, a rapid influx of English-speaking Europeans arrived in India with an interest in expanding the creation and distribution of anglophone literature. At the same time, a series of military, political, and economic successes for the British in Asia created the first … Continued
By Jeremy D. Popkin (NHC Fellow, 2000–01; 2012–13) In this innovative study of the press during the French Revolutionary crisis of the early 1830s, Jeremy Popkin shows that newspapers played a crucial role in defining a new repertoire of identities—for workers, women, and members of the middle classes—that redefined Europe’s public sphere. Nowhere was this … Continued
By Patricia Cline Cohen (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) In 1836, the murder of a young prostitute made headlines in New York City and around the country, inaugurating a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting that haunts us today. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett. … Continued
By Ellen Gruber Garvey (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) Men and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks-the ancestors of Google and blogging. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, African American janitors to farmwomen, abolitionists to Confederates, people cut out and pasted down their reading. Writing with Scissors opens a new window into the … Continued
After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers, searching for missing family members. Inspired by the power of these ads, this webinar will use slave narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to guide back to devastating moments of family separation during slavery when people were sold away from parents, … Continued
Betty Debnam created and edited the Mini Page, a nationally syndicated newspaper supplement that ran from 1969 to 2007. Inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame in 1999, her journalistic efforts introduced children to forms of news and ignited their curiosity. In this Humanities Moment, Debnam reflects on both her familial ties to … Continued