Leslie Reagan is a well-respected professor of history who joined Illinois faculty in 1992. But this past Oct. 16, she was Leah Schwartz, an outspoken, disaffected factory worker from the year 1913 who makes button holes all day.She was a lively...
The British Empire was not the model of peace and stability, the “Pax Britannica,” as it’s often portrayed. The common narrative of the empire’s rise and fall is misleading, says a University of Illinois history professor.
Dissent...
Baseball was still a relatively young sport when roughly 20,000 people packed the small Oklahoma City stadium that was designed to hold less than 10,000. With the stands filled, a multitude lined the outfield foul lines, leading one reporter to wisecrack that “any guy ought to be able to pitch with...
All of Germany was riveted last year by a three-part television miniseries, Generation War—the story of five Germans swept up in the titanic upheaval of World War II. Roughly 7 million viewers tuned in for each episode, sparking national debate in a country that has been grappling with the...
Today we call it influence, clout, “who you know.” It gets junior into the top school, swings the big business deal, gets legislation passed or killed. When exposed, we say it’s unfair and corrupt, and we might even get the law involved. But in France of the 1700s it was the way of the world—at...
What was the black Confederate soldier's myth? Over 150 years after the Civil War, many websites, articles, and organizations still assert that between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans willingly served as soldiers in the Confederate army.
Patrick R. Cleburne, a...
Before he even sits down for an interview in an Urbana coffee shop, Mark Leff feels compelled to say something. He gave another writer a similar warning 15 years ago, after being named professor of the year in Illinois by the Carnegie Foundation.
“You hit the jackpot: What has to be the campus’s...
With the recent release of the movie 42, many are reflecting on Jackie Robinson as a symbol that anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. A baseball historian at U of I, however, points out that racial integration of Major League...
When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation almost 150 years ago, he made ending slavery a Union goal in the Civil War, then more than a year and a half old. Less widely understood is how the demands of war also were destroying slavery from within and dramatically upending southern...
The Irish were essentially America’s first ethnic group, with more than 3 million flooding into the United States between 1840 and 1890. By 1900, in fact, there were more Irish in America than in Ireland.The Irish also became the model for other ethnic groups that followed, says University of...