Feature Channels: History

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The Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents announced today it elected Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, effective June 16. Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016. Bunch’s election is unprecedented for the Smithsonian: He will be the first African American to lead the Smithsonian, and the first historian elected Secretary.

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An interactive map of lynchings that occurred in the United States from 1883 to 1941 reveals not just the extent of mob violence, but also underscores how the roles of economy, topography and law enforcement infrastructure

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Rollo-Koster is the author of eight books on the papacy. She was interviewed by a number of media outlets following the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and was featured in a Time.com story in the spring of 2019 about Game of Thrones.

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Which came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived on the island in 1627 to encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs.

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Students interested in the science behind art and its conservation will now be able to study at West Virginia University in the Bachelor of Arts in Technical Art History program, the first degree of its kind in the nation.

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A Florida State University professor’s research suggests a theory by famed economist Thomas Piketty on present-day wealth inequality actually explains a lot about how smaller-scale societies in the prehistoric Mediterranean developed.

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Laura Curry has never been abroad, but next year she’ll have the opportunity to study in Tanzania as West Virginia University’s 26th Boren Scholar.

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The acclaimed national Colored Conventions Project has named two members of the UI campus community co-directors of its first pilot satellite partner, and a new course gives students an opportunity to rediscover this little-known part of Iowa history.

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Four West Virginia University faculty members, all in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, have received grants from the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research abroad.

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In 2013, Timothy Koeth received an extraordinary gift: a heavy metal cube and a crumpled message that read, “Taken from Germany, from the nuclear reactor Hitler tried to build. Gift of Ninninger.” Koeth accepted the cube and its note as an invitation to the adventure of a lifetime. In Physics Today, Koeth and Miriam Hiebert describe what they’ve discovered while exploring the German quest and failure to build a working nuclear reactor during WWII.

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This story is part of a series, called Georgia Groundbreakers, that celebrates innovative and visionary faculty, students, alumni and leaders throughout the history of the University of Georgia—and their profound, enduring impact on our state, our nation and the world.

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Baylor University has announced a $15 million gift from The Sunderland Foundation of Overland Park, Kansas, that will provide significant support for one of the University’s highest priority projects within its Give Light philanthropic campaign: the restoration of the iconic Tidwell Bible Building.

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The April 15 fire at the 850-year-old Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was met with disbelief and despair by people worldwide. Catholics mourned the damage to their sacred religious center during Holy Week, while others lamented the potential loss of a significant architectural landmark. Hundreds of thousands posted photos of their experiences visiting the cathedral on social media, while others anguished over never having seen the site in person.

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Indiana University experts in art history, digital preservation and historical collections are available to comment on the potential role of high-resolution photography, digitization and other high-tech preservation methods in the restoration of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

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Across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them as detailed in a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research.

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Studies of a river used in 20th-century logging shows that the bedrock has eroded to create a new channel. Such human-driven geology may be common worldwide.

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Like “Star Wars,” URI Professor Joelle Rollo-Koster has used “GOT” in class to explain aristocratic feuds of 12th and 13th century France and England, including this semester in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages. Simply, she wonders if students’ ability to follow the labyrinth of shifting alliances in “Game of Thrones” can be transferred to following the dynastic intricacies of medieval Europe.

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ASU Bioarchaeologist sworn to secrecy after bone examination reveals Casimir Pulaski might have been a woman

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Researchers offer insights into how a key piece of photosynthetic machinery changed over 3 billion years.

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On a bright and chilly spring morning, the Boise State Geophysics Club was engaged in a rather somber task. They were using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometers and GPS to begin locating the graves of inmates buried in the cemetery at the former Idaho State Prison, now the historic site known as the Old Idaho Penitentiary located off of Warm Springs Avenue.

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The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “In Mid-Sentence,” a selection of photographs from the museum’s collection that, when seen together, showcase the camera’s ability to capture people in dialogue. Featuring more than 25 images of people in the midst of public speeches, intimate confessions, shared jokes, political confrontations and other forms of verbal exchange, the exhibition will explore the power of visual communication.

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The reason that humans shifted away from hunting and gathering, and to agriculture -- a much more labor-intensive process -- has always been a riddle. It is only more confusing because the shift happened independently in about a dozen areas across the globe.

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A winter break expedition to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences results in important find for students on UD team

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The NEH awarded the Menokin Foundation a $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, one of 22 such grants. The 3:1 challenge, seeking to leverage federal funds against private investment, requires Menokin to raise $1.5 million. Menokin will stabilize the 18th century National Historic Landmark for educational programming.

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Researchers provide first conclusive evidence linking widespread ocean oxygen loss and rising sea levels to a 430-million-year-old mass extinction event.

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In Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, Kellie Carter Jackson, assistant professor of Africana studies at Wellesley College, provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical use of violence among antebellum black activists.