I’m very pleased to be hosting my 6th History Carnival, and I thought it would be fun to extend the carnival into a new medium this time: I’ve spent the whole day Tweeting the carnival at my twitter feed. Sharon Howard created a dynamic archive of the carnival, which can also be found by using the hashtag #HC84. I still haven’t entirely fallen in love with Twitter — 140 characters is very, very short — but I’m enjoying the flow of information it facilitates, and the way microblogging’s supplemented my regular history blog reading and writing. It exists in a very productive gray space between professional and informal communication.
Not all spam is content free: Fifty pretty good sites for ancient history by an online degree provider. Speaking of online education and spam, History of Economics blog found a neat visual history of online/distance learning.
Three from Holocaust Controversies:
- Auschwitz Blueprints: “ignorance and exaggerations from journalists are inexcusable, but… utterly unsurprising”
- Evidence of mobile gas extermination units in 1943 Minsk
- Critical reading of a survivor’s diamond-studded pastiche tale
In other war-related posts, Scandalous Women gave us an extensive summary of Mary Lovell’s biography of WW2 spy Elizabeth Thorpe. “America is in it now and forever if Germany chooses to look at it that way,” wrote 1st Sgt. Samuel E. Avery from a trench on 19 February 1918. Speaking of war correspondence, Letters of Note has great stuff, like President George HW Bush to his children before the first Gulf war. They also have Superman critiques directed at the creators. And if that’s not enough military history for you, there’s good news: the Military History Carnival Rises Again! Next month’s will be at Airminded. Speaking of next month, if you want to host a future History Carnival, check out http://historycarnival.org and contact Sharon Howard.
Comparison of the Haiti and Berlin Airlifts by Vintage Aeroplane Writer. Big History: The Origins of the Moon. Also at History Moments, The origins of (and fate of, in one case) the battleship in the American Navy
The Oklahoma History Center Blog shares a Smoking Jacket made of Cigar Ribbons. Classic recycling!
Manan Ahmed got visual this month: circa 1950 Adverts from a Pakistani anglophone pictorial weekly, including a bad history book of some interest. Also South Asian content in European Opera, with video!
In history of science, Brett Holman gave us WW2 Japanese Death Ray Experiments, and Ether Wave Propaganda gave us The Ray that Wasn’t wave OR particle, a fascinating discussion of a scientific blind alley.
Culture&Stuff’s inaugural blog post recounts painful relationship between George II and Frederick of Hanover.
Zunguzungu (aka Aaron Bady) looks for the maybe-African or maybe-Irish origins of TR’s “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick”
Tim Burke on the Scarlet Letter, canon, historical pedagogy and culture, as only Tim Burke can. Or should.
The Desi Knitter had a thoughtful discussion of the ambiguities of restoration and orientalism in Melghat.
MidtownG at Progressive Historians on small but telling clashes: Klan gets beat and Revolutionaries get beat.
Speaking of revolutionaries, Howard Zinn died. Many, many posts. My favorite, though, was Acephalous who shoehorned JD Salinger’s death in, too. Also at Scott’s place, sometimes the URL says it all: http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2010/01/class-canceled-on-account-of-black-death.html Life is stranger than fiction, most of the time.
There was some news out of the AHA conference this year, which I followed on twitter. The AHA’s own roundup covers a lot of ground, including Dan Cohen’s provocative Is Google Good For History? The Historical Society had it’s own roundup of AHA news items, especially the job market debates. As always, the AHA is the venue for announcing the 2009 Cliopatria Awards for Best Blog, New Blog, Group Blog, Post, Series, and Writer, a great crop this year.
All was not happy: LGBTQI historians were not mollified by the mini-conference (though the AHA is calling it a victory and doing one again next year). Speaking of gender history, the Tenured Radical looked at historians in the California Prop 8 trial.
That’s it for this edition of the History Carnival. My wife described it as a “Carnival Parade” approach, which I like.
I believe I’ll be hosting the March 1 carnival at Disability Studies, Temple U. It’s a threepeat for DS,TU, and just in time for March Madness…
Sorry, I forgot to mention that!
Diaoyu Islands have been a part of China since the Ming Dynasty, US Congressman David Wu remarked in a statement at the Georgetown University.
“Historically and geographically the Diaoyu Islands have been a part of China since the Ming Dynasty. Japanese sources have acknowledged Chinese ownership since the late 1700s,” said David Wu.
Japan only laid claim to the islands after its war with China in 1895, David Wu added.
In 1945 Japan agreed to accept the Potsdam Proclamation. And according to the proclamation, Japan should return to China/Taiwan and Diaoyu Islands it had illegally seized from China. Japan returned Taiwan to China but refused to return Diaoyu Islands to China.
And in 1951 Japan unilaterally signed the San Francisco Treaty with the US, which enabled the US to exercise the so-called “administrative rights” over the Diaoyu Islands. But this illegal treaty has never been accepted by the China government.
The US committed an error by letting Japan to manage the islands instead of returning the islands to China. This is an error made by the US that needs to be corrected, David Wu said.