Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are currently wrestling with. Our guest today, historian Nick Witham, author of Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America, reminds us that these questions are not new. Some of the country's most prominent writer-historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner, grappled with how to reach the public with good historical scholarship.
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Episode 84: "How 'Biblical Womanhood' Became Gospel Truth'"
Episode 83: Celebrity in the Early American Republic
Episode 82: The Fastest Game in the World
Episode 81: God's Law and Order
Episode 80: How Alternative Media Broke Our Democracy
Episode 79: John Foster Dulles and the Cold War Protestant Left
Episode 78: "How a 1630 Sermon Shaped American Exceptionalism"
Episode 77: The Art of Living
Episode 76: Howard Thurman: Theologian, Mystic, Activist
Episode 75: The Jefferson Bible
Episode 74: An Independent Woman in Revolutionary America
Episode 73: Cowboy Evangelicalism
Episode 72: Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump, and the Upending of SHEAR
Episode 71: Writing History for Young Readers
Episode 70: Systemic Racism
Episode 69: Be Like Mike?
Episode 68: The History of the Presidential Cabinet
Episode 67: Exploring the History of Childhood and Play Through 50 Historic Treasures
Episode 66: The Boston Massacre
Episode 65: "What Would Lasch Say?"
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