Tag: Tara Strauch
Centre Trail Podcast 15: Frederick Douglass & Black Panther
Tara and John get together at the end of Black History Month to discuss the life of Frederick Douglass, whose two hundredth birthday was this past February 14th. We particularly focus on the impact of his famous memoir A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and think about this month’s release of the new ...
Centre Trail Podcast 14: The Winter Olympics
Tara and John discuss the Winter Olympics in Pyeonchang, South Korea and some wider historical questions around the Olympic Games. Where does this idea come from, how does it translate into a type of “Olympic ideal” and what are some of the ramifications of this for how countries interact with each other?
Olympic Roundup
In honor of our podcast coming out tomorrow, here are a few links to good reads about the olympics: Why are Jamaican runners so good? This article tackles some of the historical and cultural issues embedded in that question. Skis are more than 4,000 years old. And according to this piece they have changed a ...
Centre Trail Podcast 13: St. Valentine’s Day and Lent
Tara and John talk about St. Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, which this year fall on the same day, raising interesting comparisons about their broader cultural impact. Come for the discussion of historical context of two juxtaposed cultural practices, stay for the sweet Anne of Cleves references.
We are Pain and What Cures Pain, Both
Below is a story from Tara’s CentreTerm Class on Alternate History. Our author is Aarthi Vadhanam, a senior math major, who chose to think about the creation of the modern Middle East. In this story, she imagines an Iran that was friendly with the United States and a major player in Middle Eastern politics. She ...
Standing Armies and Military Parades
The latest news cycle is full of reports concerning President Trump’s desire to have a grand military parade in Washington D.C. The impetus behind this supposedly lies with the President’s positive reaction to experiencing France’s annual Bastille Day parade in person and a desire to recognize the service of the men and women of the ...
Centre Trail Podcast Twelve: When is a sport a sport, and what’s a Founding Father?
Tara and John get together as the spring semester at Centre College starts to get underway. John is teaching the history of modern popular sport, and he talks a little about how to define sports and what kind of interesting historical questions that activity raises. Tara revisits her blog post on Founding Fathers, and talks ...
“Founding Fathers”
Did you know that the phrase “founding fathers” wasn’t coined until 1916? It was then that Warren Harding used that wording in a speech to the Republican National Convention. Somehow, I always find this a surprising fact. Have Americans only thought about the revolutionary generations as father figures for a century? Americans before 1916 certainly ...
Centre Trail Podcast Episode Eleven: Sport and Slavery
Tara and John get together to discuss their upper division classes in the spring of 2018. Tara is teaching classes on the American Revolution and the history of American slavery, while John is teaching a class on popular sport in a modern, global context. The conversation moves on to some pedagogy pretty quickly: how do ...
Centre Trail Podcast Episode Ten: Steampunk and Talking to the Public
Tara and John get together to talk about the intensive term coming to an end. Warning: we are very tired in this episode! John talks about his recent op-ed in the “Made by History” blog in the Washington Post about American policy in East Asia, and Tara talks about the steampunk genre and its relationship ...
