Season 2, Episode 5: A Prison by Any Other Name: Imagining Childhood Criminality in 1920s Chicago
Release Date: 03/16/2021
Reverb Effect
Nationalism. Emerging technology. Militarization. Destroyed bodies. Total war. In this episode, three historians reconsider the dominant themes of the First World War—which are as relevant today as they were a century ago. Cheyenne Pettit studies Canadian and British conflicts over the treatment of venereal disease during World War One. Matthew Hershey's research explores meanings and experiences of soldiers’ suicide in the First World War. And Lediona Shahollari focuses on the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange during the partition of those two states in the aftermath of the Great...
info_outline Season 5, Episode 5: Not Just for Scholars: Democratizing the ArchivesReverb Effect
Archives are central to the work of historians. But they are not just for scholars. In this episode, we talk with an archivist, an archival theorist, and a historian, all working to democratize these spaces, what they hold, and who can access them. Professor Patricia Garcia will help us think about the archives through a critical lens. Archivist Brian Williams will help us understand how to build an archive essentially from scratch. And Professor Stephen Berrey will help us understand what role the public can play in archival endeavors.
info_outline Season 5, Episode 4: Constructed Categories: Syriac Christians and the Immigration Act of 1924Reverb Effect
One person, missionary EW McDowell, influenced the fate of Syriac Christians ahead of the US Immigration Act of 1924. In this episode, Hannah Roussel interviews James Wolfe about McDowell, whose writings and testimony before Congress opened up the dialectics about the nature of the category “Asiatic.”
info_outline Season 5, Episode 3: “Peace to the World”: Lessons from the Soviet Antiwar UndergroundReverb Effect
Alexander McConnell talks with Olga Medvedkova, a Soviet antiwar activist whose arrest garnered worldwide attention in 1983. In light of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what can we learn from Medvedkova and the Soviet peace movement?
info_outline Season 5, Episode 2: Waiting with MozartReverb Effect
Join Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777 as he waits, in an aristocrat’s antechamber in Munich, for a conversation that could change his life. What did it mean to wait in the past? Who waited? How did it shape society and culture, and how did it define social interactions?
info_outline Season 5, Episode 1: Curating the Remnants of Enslavement: A Conversation with Jason YoungReverb Effect
In this episode, Paige Newhouse interviews Jason Young, co-curator of Hear Me Now: the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a traveling exhibit housed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art centering enslaved artisans and the stoneware they produced.
info_outline Season 4, Episode 3: Clesippus and the Candelabrum: Imagining Disability in Ancient RomeReverb Effect
The funerary inscription of Clesippus tells an impressive story of illustrious honors and administrative achievements in Ancient Rome. But there is another story, one of a man who navigated slavery, disability, and the sexual advances of the woman who owned him.
info_outline Season 4, Episode 2: Forging Property from Struggle in South AfricaReverb Effect
In 1911, a contested horse race sparked one of the largest movements by Black South Africans to reclaim colonized land. How does the history of the Native Farmers Association offer a glimpse into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa?
info_outline Season 4, Episode 1: Laboring for the Puerto Rican VoteReverb Effect
What happens when ten Puerto Rican men try to register to vote in 1950s Connecticut? Their eligibility is contested, and Democrats and Republicans become embroiled in a heated debate that ends at the Connecticut Superior Court. The ten Puerto Rican men, however, get lost at the wayside … we don’t even know all ten of their names. How much of their story can we uncover? In this episode, public historian Elena Marie Rosario sifts through archival records to recreate the story of these ten men, while also paying attention to how underlying themes of colonialism, ethnicity, and politics...
info_outline Season 3, Episode 4: The Two MonsieursReverb Effect
In 1836, two tailors transformed the fashion industry forever when they opened the first chemiserie, a shirt store, in Paris. Their radical feat? They tailored a shirt. In this episode, John Finkelberg tells the story of how Monsieurs Pierret and Lami-Housset essentially invented the precursor to the modern button-down shirt. Within a few years, these garments were one of the most sought-after luxury goods. Created by expert men, these revolutionary new products embodied new notions of masculinity developing in nineteenth century Paris. Except one of the tailors, Monsieur Pierret, was actually...
info_outlineMichael sat in the intake room, waiting for his friend to arrive. He didn’t expect family to visit. By then, his mother had passed and he was estranged from his father. Without other visitors, he was eager to help his new friend, sociologist and criminologist Clifford Shaw. Shaw had taken an interest in the boys at the St. Charles School for Boys, and asked Michael to write down his life history sometime around 1930.
Testimonials like Michael’s illuminate a complicated dynamic between children and authority figures, which plays out literally throughout the life history and in more subtle ways in the actual construction of the text. Allie Goodman follows Michael’s story to explore these dynamics. What were these children trying to say? How can we best listen?
Content warning: This episode contains depictions of police violence.