An Incomplete History

Join Hilary and Geoff as they discuss the origin of Thanksgiving, how it has changed over the last 400 years, and how it has be reconfigured as a secular/public holiday in the United States. We also delve into how the idea of Thanksgiving can over-simplify and white-wash Anglo-Indian relations in the 17th century.

PS – We also discuss out favorite Thanksgiving dishes.

How did the Women’s Suffrage movement emerge in the United States? Why did it take decades to ratify the 19th Amendment? Join us this week to find out!

Join us as we continue discussing the American West!

Here are some of the books we’ve mentioned in the two-part overview:

Patricia Limerick – Legacy of Conquest
Richard White – The Middle Ground
William Cronon – Changes in the Land
Anne Hyde – Empires, Nations, and Families
Pekka Hämäläinen – Comanche Empire and Lakota America

Hilary and Geoff begin a two-part series on major issues in the history of the “American West.” What does that term mean? How has the west been imagined and conceived, both in the past and in the contemporary ways we discuss it? Who gets included and who gets left out of that history? 

This is only part one of our discussion. Join us next time as we move into late-nineteenth and twentieth century ideas about the west.

This week we continue our survey of American History by discussing the period often referred to as Jim Crow America. We cover how to periodize the era of “separate but equal,” and we discuss when introducing the harsh reality of Jim Crow, including lynching, should be introduced to younger students of history.

We’re back! This week we return and we’re trying something a bit different. We are aiming at broader topics. Our goal is to make the podcast useful for parents who now find themselves in charge of their children’s education at home. Don’t get us wrong, we’ll continue to have the same level of historical discussion and debate you’ve grown used to, but we’ll wrap it all in larger chronological chunks.

This episode cover Reconstruction, the period from 1865-1877, we talk about constitutional amendments, the Freemen’s Bureau, the rise of the KKK, the introduction of Black Codes, and the labor situation in the South following the Civil War.

This week on An Incomplete History, we discuss the development of the primary system in the United States. When and how did the two major political parties decide to hold primaries before their conventions and the subsequent presidential elections? What’s the difference between a primary and a caucus? Why do Iowa and New Hampshire go first? Is the primary system constitutionally mandated? Hilary and Geoff discuss all those things and more this week.

February 14th isn’t just about flowers, candy, and dinner with your sweetheart. It is also the anniversary of one of the bloodiest gangland confrontations in US history. On February 14, 1929 seven men were shot in a north Chicago garage. This wasn’t just the ratcheting up of Prohibition-era violence in Chicago, a city seemingly out-of-control. It was also a key moment in the expansion of the Federal Government’s powers to override local control.

In our discussion of the massacre we also cover the valorization of crime, issues surrounding the racialization of criminals, and the legacy of gangs and men like Al Capone on US pop culture.

This week on An Incomplete History Hilary and Geoff discuss the implementation and long-term effects of the 18th Amendment, that’s prohibition, on the United States. Where did the idea for a nation-wide ban on alcohol come from? What did advocates hope to accomplish? Can we really blame prohibition for a rise in organized crime? And how does the 18th Amendment, nullified decades ago, still affect your life today? Join us this week to find out.

This week Hilary and Geoff provide a little context for the often-torturous relationship between the United States and Iran. Join us as we discuss the beginnings of diplomatic contact between the countries in the nineteenth century, the rise of US involvement in the post-World War 2 Middle East, the first peace-time coup engineered by US intelligence, the Hostage Crisis, and more.