Huejotzingo Codex of 1531
Students in most history classes expect to see images in their textbooks, at least as illustrations to liven up pages of text. They do not always look at those images, much less analyze them, historically. Our students think of themselves as visual experts because of the many film, television, and digital images they see each day. In my classroom, I use images to build bridges between their... Read More »
Al-Idrisi's World Map
An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was a physician in rural Gloucestershire. Like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu he learnt of a widely known folk remedy to protect against smallpox. Smallpox cases were increasing in the 18th century and had a mortality rate of 40%. At least 30% of those who survived were left horribly scarred. Smallpox was a disease of children and youth in particular. However, dairymaids... Read More »
Apollo 11 Moonwalk
Look at this famous photograph of the July 1969 moon landing. When we look at an image like this, historians ask not only what the image shows us, but also how the image was used and how various audiences reacted to it. On the one hand, the photograph itself represented a triumph of technology. Minimally speaking, U.S. technology met the challenge of preserving film against the high... Read More »
Arms Reduction in Eastern Europe
Once in power, Mikhail Gorbachev began a reform process that followed two paths: perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost' (openness). In order to reform the Soviet economy, Gorbachev believed it was necessary to cut spending on the Soviet military, both inside Soviet borders and throughout Eastern Europe. In both 1986 and 1987, Gorbachev proposed army reductions in summit meetings with... Read More »
Article from the Encyclopedia: "Woman"
The article "Woman" was written by four contributors who considered the question from four angles: medicine and the history of opinions about women’s nature; writings about women’s place in the state and marriage; the social differences between men and women; and women’s legal status in different societies. Although the Encyclopedia, the fundamental compendium of the Enlightenment, repeated... Read More »
Bevel-rimmed Bowl
The main point in discussing bevel-rimmed bowls in college-level courses is that artifacts are as useful as texts in researching ancient societies. For the text-based historian, history begins with writing, and preliterate societies are by definition “pre-historical.” The first written texts recorded payments to individuals, payments that were probably given in BRBs, and the bowls tell us as... Read More »
Bevel-rimmed Bowl
Canadian Women's History
Children and Daguerreotypes
Daguerreotypes were the first commercially viable photographic process. Developed by French chemist Louis Daguerre in 1839, the technique quickly made its way to the US in the 1840s, the beginning of what some historians characterize as the "golden age" of childhood. Although the daguerreotype method was tedious—dependent on complicated chemical preparation, long exposure times, and an... Read More »