New America Weekly piece: America Has Never Not Had a Child Care Problem

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Sorry for the delay in posting. During my absence, I was working on a piece that has been published in New America Weekly. The article looks at the history of child care in America. It argues that we will not solve our child care problem until we recognize that women have always worked in ways that extend beyond their conventional roles as mothers. In the spring, I will be back with new posts on the history of fascism, the woman suffrage movement, and women’s wartime experiences in WWII. Until then, you can read my child care piece here.

Thanks!

~Rebecca

CHANNELING THE RAGE: Trump, Populism, and the 2016 Election

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images-2How did we get here? I can barely even type the words that will encapsulate our collective future: President Donald Trump. Even now, I have a visceral reaction to typing out those words. But, that is enough about my emotions. This piece is not about my personal distress over the election of Donald Trump. I know a number of good people who voted for Trump. I do not want to alienate them; I do not want to argue with them. Rather, I want to understand their position. Moreover, as a historian, I want to unpack how we got to this place so that we can learn from the historical factors at play.

unknown-copyDonald Trump spent half as much money and had far less official infrastructure for voter turnout than Hillary Clinton, but he still won the election.[1] Trump won fifty-one percent of voters without a high school diploma. He gained the rural vote by sixty-two percent and the suburban vote by fifty percent. Fifty-three percent of men backed Trump and fifty-eight percent of white voters went for Trump.[2] One of the few people to predict a Trump win was historian Allan Lichtman. Lichtman, who was also my PhD advisor, explains Trump’s victory as being a result of the larger forces that shape American politics. According to Lichtman, presidential elections are primarily a referendum on the performance of the party in power. Despite President Obama’s strong approval ratings, the American people wanted a change from the Democratic Party’s leadership.[3]

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Not Just One Damned Thing After Another: Thoughts on the Art of Teaching History

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In the past, I have had the privilege of working as a graduate teaching assistant for a diverse group of courses and under a broad range of teaching styles. Above all, my teaching philosophy rests on my belief in the importance of education for the development of critical analysis, empathy towards others, and human potential.

Teaching History

With regard to teaching history, I believe that it is vital to not only help students gain a thorough knowledge of historical information, but to also push them to develop the skills necessary for historical thinking. Thus, my approach challenges students to think like historians. To this end, it encourages them to unravel the connections between continuity and change, as well as to think more deeply about how we know and represent the past.

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Historical Research: Philosophy and Practice

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To borrow from Joyce Appleby, I consider myself a practitioner of “practical realism.” I appreciate post-modern theorists’ suspicion of supposed essential universal truths; however, I still strive to obtain a degree of professional objectivity in my reconstructions and interpretations of the past.

Joyce Appleby
Joyce Appleby

In general, I investigate the interplay between language and ideas, particularly in the realms of religion, politics, gender, and the law. My current research examines the dueling civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in order to shed light on the gendered ideas that have influenced social initiatives, political positions, and legal philosophies. In total, my work seeks to explore how the construction of ideas through language helps to create communal identities and values.

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Revolutionary Style: A Review of Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion

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For decades, scholars have attempted to capture the circumstances that led up to the French Revolution. In The Coming of the French Revolution, for instance, Georges Lefebvre explains the causes of the French Revolution with a socioeconomic interpretation. In particular, Lefebvre argues that the rising dominance of the bourgeoisie produced the political turmoil of the revolution.[1] In other works, scholars, such as Francois Furet, Robert Darnton, and Keith Michael Baker, underscore the importance of political ideologies and culture for understanding the causes of the revolution.[2] Still others historians, such as Timothy Tackett, contend that the ineptitude of the royal family also helped to bring about the war. Tackett, for example, insists that the salacious and careless actions of the royal family before and during the war undermined the public’s perception of the family as a symbol of sacred authority.[3]

Similar to Tackett’s analysis, Caroline Weber also draws attention to the significance of the royal family in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution.[4] The central aim of Weber’s study is to show how Marie Antoinette used the appeal of court fashion to exert political power. Through a comparison of Marie Antoinette to her famous ancestor, Louis XIV, Weber argues that the queen “identified fashion as a key weapon in her struggle for personal prestige, authority, and sometimes mere survival.”[5] In all, Weber concludes that Marie Antoinette fought her political adversaries with style.

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