“And Then Came the Lion”: Remembering Congressman John Lewis

For most of 2020, I’d been able to hold it together, rolling with every punch and willing myself to stay positive as each month took more and more of the life I once called “normal.” Sometime in March, the pandemic came to America and bizarre became the status quo. Right around that time, as we …

The AHA’s “Erasing History or Making History? Race, Racism, and the American Memorial Landscape” Facebook Live Discussion

If you have been following the news about decisions to remove Confederate monuments, or about direct action by crowds to remove monuments, you should take some time to listen to this discussion on “Erasing History or Making History?  Race, Racism, and the American Memorial Landscape.”   You’ll hear two eminent scholars, Annette Gordon-Reed and David …

Required Reading: The History of African Americans

Black lives matter. When we examine history, we see the myriad ways people made choices and set up institutions to demean and erase the lives of Black people. We also see people who stood up and put their lives on the line to assert the value of Black lives. The events of the last ten …

Spring Stories 2020: Chapter 2

The spring semester of 2020 has not worked out the way any of us expected it to, or hoped it would. Since Hope College announced, on March 10, that we would be moving to on-line education after Spring Break, we have all been on unfamiliar pathways. We are figuring out how to manage, one day …

Spring 2020 Courses are Here!

Not sure which History classes to take in the Spring? Our upper-level courses are available below for your perusing! If you have questions about them, please contact Dr. Jeanne Petit (petit@hope.edu). History 141-01 A The Historian’s Vocation (2 Credits)MWF 12:00 -12:50 PM | Janis Gibbs Do you love history, but struggle to answer when people …

Graduate Insight: A History Degree at Work

Hello to all the current History students, faculty and staff, and alumni. It has been well over a year since I stepped foot into Lubbers to attend a class and a lot has changed since then. I took a well-needed year off from school to figure out what I exactly was going to do with my …

Faculty Feature: Pliny was the Answer

Coming out of a class one evening I got a text from my wife: “Guess what the answer was on Final Jeopardy.” I replied, “Since I don’t know what the question was, I can’t know the answer.” She couldn’t remember the exact wording but it had to do with letters written by a Roman and …