A Nation Without Borders: An Interview with the Author

Steven Hahn (Ph.D. Yale) is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Here he deftly summarizes his new book about the United States from 1830-1910 as seen more from the South, West, and Mexico rather than from the Northeast: A Nation Without Borders – Process

A Factory Fire and Frances Perkins

Today marks 100 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a blaze that lasted 18 minutes and left 146 workers dead. Among the many in New York City who witnessed the tragedy was Frances Perk…

Source: A Factory Fire and Frances Perkins | Prologue: Pieces of History

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

In 1919 a wave of molasses traveling at 35mph destroyed an entire Boston neighborhood. Find out about this strange disaster at Atlas Obscura: 100 Wonders: The Great Boston Molasses Flood | Atlas Obscura

Talking To or Talking Past Each Other in Progressive Era Iowa?

I am delighted to introduce to the world–well, the digital world–a new site created by 4 of my students.

The site is Talking To or Talking Past Each Other? | Woodrow Wilson, the Society of American Indians, and Progressive Era Iowa. It is the result of an assignment I made in my Progressive Era and Reform course.

The course was short–only 8 weeks. From the teaching side of things, it was a challenge to know what major assignment to make, other than reading and exams. There was little time for extensive research. The library folks here–in this case, most notably Greta Grond, Systems and Reference Librarian–have suggested Web 2.0 projects, for which they are happy to provide support. That is, have students construct web sites about substantively-researched topics critically considered. In other words, move students from web consumers to creators of web content that is something other than entertainment, opinion, or even Wikipedia.

Loess Hills, Iowa.

I am an old dog (Doug), but I do try to learn new tricks. I had Aaron Nash, Jordan Reinders, Jenna Ripke, and Cassandra Westpfahl build a site (with Greta Grond’s digital oversight) presenting and comparing two Progressive era events in Iowa: candidate Woodrow Wilson’s Sioux City speech in 1912 and the annual convention of the  Society of American Indians in Cedar Rapids in 1916. (The 1912 presidential campaign was a 4-way race that highlighted progressivism. The Society of American Indians was the first significant pan-Indian organization; its members were arguably “progressive” and “assimilated” Indians.)

I’m delighted with what Aaron, Jordy, Jenna, and Cassie came up with. I hope you will find their site worth taking a look at. Not only can you go directly to their site, per the link at the top of this post, you can also find the link here at Northwestern College’s Digital Commons, which is taking shape bit by byte.