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The idea that society is a system—or that it frequently acts like a system—is so familiar that we take it for granted. In a broad sense, we often find it easy to generalize about the behavior and beliefs of large groups of people. We talk confidently about...

On the occasion of the paperback release of The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race, I want to reflect on two images—one that appears on the book’s cover and one that does not feature in the book at all but is equally illustrative of its...

No figure has hovered over eighteenth-century printing in America or the historians who write about it more than Benjamin Franklin. The most famous colonial American printer, Franklin was by far the most successful practitioner of the trade before the American...

Movable Markets is the untold story of the evolutionary movement of the wholesale marketplace for fresh food in the United States from central produce districts to planned industrial parks on the urban periphery. Whereas food histories have traditionally...

Becoming an Academic is the result of nearly 10 years of blogging on The Thesis Whisperer. The blog has become popular with PhD students and faculty in Australia and the UK as a trusted source of advice for people struggling with the “academic hunger games.”...

Over the past year, I have issued short descriptions of the topics covered in How University Boards Work: A Guide for Trustees, Officers, and Leaders in Higher Education. In this post, I discuss the role of the campus president as Chief Mission Officer as well...

Ballyhoo, as a word and as a title, is a paradox. What joy in saying it—Ballyhoo!—and yet, what performance and emptiness—O.E.D.: “ a showman’s touting speech.” For several years now, I’ve been interested in the cultural, personal, and even political (and...

When Howard Dean visited the Democratic headquarters where I was volunteering in 2016, I asked: “Hillary has promised to set aside $25 billion for HBCUs and to make public universities tuition-free. What is she going to do for the numerous small private...

Today marks the 503rd anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. The Bard changed the world of theater and literature in his 52 years. We are very fortunate to have copious Shakespeare scholarship in our collection, including the journal Shakespeare Bulletin...

Emily Folger née Jordan was a bluestocking: an educated, intellectual woman with a scholarly bent. In 1875, she followed her two sisters to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Elected president for life of her class of 36 women, she went home to Brooklyn...