This month, and this issue of our newsletter, marks the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the American Social History Project. This seems the appropriate moment to thank all of you for your years—decades!—of support, collaboration, and good will.

Thirty. Such a full, round, and venerable number leaves us amazed, proud, and a little chastened. Our achievements are based on a long, long, long list of talented and farsighted staff members and collaborators the combined number of which would fill a good-sized auditorium. And our numbers continue to grow as each new effort and project adds more names to the...Read more

Over the course of the past three decades investment in public higher education has declined dramatically. Most American public university systems, such as California, Wisconsin, and Illinois, have experienced serious reductions in their state funding requiring dramatic cutbacks in academic programs and services they provide to their students.

Here at the City University of New York (CUNY), we have gone from a tuition-free system as late as 1976 to one that receives more than 45% of its operating budget from student fees and tuition. During this same time, the faculty workforce has been...Read more

Last October historian Peter H. Wood, professor emeritus at Duke University, gave a talk at the Graduate Center sponsored by ASHP/CML and the Ph.D. programs in History and Art History about Winslow Homer’s recently rediscovered 1866 painting, Near Andersonville (marking the publication of his new book on the subject). He was kind enough to also record a podcast conversation with ASHP/CML’s Donna Thompson Ray about the life of North Carolina cabinetmaker Thomas Day, and how his experience as a free black characterized nineteenth-century race relations in the South. Peter assesses Day’s life as a businessman who crafted sought-after furniture collected...Read more

ASHP/CML congratulates Executive Director Joshua Brown on his 2010 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in U.S. history for Studies in the Visual Culture of the American Civil War. This new work builds upon Josh’s earlier book Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (University of California, 2002). The importance of studying visual cultural is one of Josh’s key contributions to the field of 19th century U.S. history and this fellowship acknowledges the significance of his past work and gives support to his ongoing scholarship. We wish him great progress during his six-month leave...Read more