Host Dr. Rick Reiman, a professor of history, reprises his presentation for Constitution Day 2018, delivered on September 17, 2018. Dr. Reiman also interviews assistant professor of history Dr. Dana Caldemeyer, a specialist in nineteenth century US history about her thoughts about the 14th Amendment’s role in her own research.

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On September 5, 2018, an anonymous “senior official in the Trump administration” published an Op-Ed in the New York Times, raising a seeming unprecedented cry of alarm. He (or she) claimed to be trying to keep an unhinged president from going off the rails by working against the president when he threatened peace and democracy. What are the historical precedents for this sort of thing? This podcast was recorded the day of the Op-Ed’s release.

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In this first episode of the 2017 series, recorded in October 2017, we look at the shift from a future perspective on memory, and an amnesiac indifference to the late global conflict, in the first decades after World War II to the present “memory boom,” when cultures can’t seem to keep their eyes off the past. As the war recedes in time, it seems to come closer to our attention. What is going on?

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My comments on “Between Remembering and Forgetting,” a professional session on German history in which I recently participated.

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In this podcast I summarize, to the best of my ability, the ideas of “Memory on the Move,” written by Stef Craps, Lucy Bond and Pieter Vermeulen. The hope is to present the ideas in a way that is more comprehensible to the general reader and improve a state of affairs in which scholars speak only to other scholars, and leave the rest of the population as ignorant as the present state of global politics indicate them to be. I close with news of a contest in which listeners can enter for a chance to win one Kindle copy of a new book in the field of History.

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Prof. Aleida Assmann is one of the leading lights of international memory studies. Prof. Astrid Erll interviewed her in a video that can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/153089856. In this podcast I try to summarize Prof. Assmann’s points in my own words, which may be helpful to those students familiar with a different vernacular or just beginning to familiarize themselves with memory studies. My interpretation of her views on memory studies are just that, mine, and are presented in the hope that they are expressed clearly and correctly.

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Immigration in the late nineteenth century deserves attention on its own. It was a litmus test of how Americans viewed themselves, their society and the strength of that society or the direction that they wanted it to go in, curiously, the same as today.

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In our last podcast, we looked at many specific problems besetting Americans in the Age of Excess. In this addendum to that podcast we look at the Age of Excess with a much broader view, seeing why it is such an exciting period and discussing the wonderful irony of it all that this is perhaps the period in American history least studied by scholars!

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Hist 2112 students will find this five-minute podcast to be a useful guide to highlighting the most important slides in the PowerPoint on “The Age of Excess,” and providing an overview of the Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century. Please post your thoughts here or on Twitter at @MemoryThruMedia.

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This podcast provides a brief overview of one way of simplifying and approaching the complex subject of Reconstruction, This is meant to supplement my history course, HIST 2112. Photo by Carol Highsmith, in the public domain through the Library of Congress

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In this podcast I review Philippe Sands’s award-winning book in search of his family and the origins of crimes against humanity and genocide. An international lawyer, Sands writes of his discovery that the lawyers responsible for these two innovations in international law shared a common origin with his grandfather and grandmother in the region of Lvov in pre-World War II Poland. Searching for the roots of his career and the answers to mysteries about the survival of his own family, Sands brilliantly relates a tale of memory, discovery and history. Podcast site photograph by Carol Highsmith of fresco, “Society Freed Through Justice,” in Justice Department Building, Washington, D.C. Photo in public domain in the Library of Congress.

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In this episode I introduce this podcast series by reflecting on the Inaugural Conference on Memory Studies taking place in Amsterdam, December 3-5, 2016, the same weekend as the recording of this podcast. We look at how far Memory Studies has come and where it seems to be going, as well as directions and tangents many people would like to see it take. Disclaimer: I am merely commenting on the conference from afar and have no involvement in the conference or its organization. Feel free to add your thoughts on good books and articles in the field of Memory Studies at Twitter feed, @MemoryThruMedia.

After listening to the podcast post your comments on this page, if you please!

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