Centre Trail History Podcast

Today, Maddie Huber and previous Centre Trail Intern Payton Howard discuss the history of Black Friday and what the retail holiday means today.

Considered one of the most haunted sites in America, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium is sure to scare anyone. Come listen to former Centre Trail Intern Payton Howard and myself discuss the history behind this building as well as tell some ghost stories that surround it.

John and Tara sit down to talk about Tara's research over the summer. She had two main projects: a book on American holidays written for a popular audience, and in-depth archival research on documents from Centre College's mid-nineteenth century history. She talks about what it is like to work on two projects, and the benefits - to professor and student alike - of working with an undergraduate on historical research.

We're back! John and Tara are back at Centre, though in truth we never left, or at least did not leave for long... John talks about his research trip to the Vatican and adventures in reading through documents in languages you are unable to read.

Today, CentreTrail intern Colleen Coyle takes over the podcast, interviewing two of her favorite Spanish professors, Dr. Chantell Limerick and Dr. Laura Chinchilla about what role the topic of history plays in the Spanish classroom.

Our intern Colleen Coyle joins us this week to talk about relics and other objects and spaces that people like to commemorate, from a President's prosthetic leg to computerized renditions of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

John and Tara celebrate Opening Day in the United States by talking about the subject of John's book coming out this summer: baseball... in Taiwan! Come for tales of imperialism and cultural interaction across the Pacific, stay for slightly graphic accounts of intensive high school baseball training sessions.

This week we talk about Tara's latest publication, a book chapter about multiracial communities in antebellum Ohio. We discuss Quakerism and slavery in North America and the complexities of multiracial identities and communities in early nineteenth century Ohio.

Tara asks John about one of this classes this term, an upper division course called "Age of the Samurai." John talks about what the course covers, from romantic battles to noble deaths.

John and Tara are coming to the end of a long semester, and with Thanksgiving on the horizon sat down to chat about a subject they both enjoy a great deal: historical fiction! In particular, we talk about why we like this genre of writing in our capacity as historians. When is there too much fiction in your history? What are the benefits of being able to play around with historical fact in the interest of telling a story?

John and Tara get together to talk about how the public remembers and celebrates veterans of the armed services. Practices differ across the Atlantic despite a shared history in the two largest conflicts of the twentieth century.

John and Tara welcome Centre Trail's new intern Payton, and Tara shares her research on a parody of the college catalog produced by Centre College students in 1854. Be ready for hilarious stories of one legged professors and the noble sport of turkey stealing. Off to the wars again!

John and Tara talk about the tragic fire at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What does it mean to lose these records of human knowledge, and how do historians approach the reality of limitations to the knowledge we have collected? What are archives and how do historians use them?

Following the passing of Senator John McCain, John and Tara talk about the history of social conventions surrounding the deaths of political figures in the United States and China.

JD Dotson, Payton Howard, Sam Long, Kersey Reynolds and Will Smith discuss the concept of performance enhancement in modern sport.

Benjamin Hadlock, Austin Lotspeich, Trace Oliver and Andrew Salchli discuss the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919 as part of a broader look at the phenomenon of cheating in sport.

Dylan Barnett, Trevor Carnell, Jeffrey Chen and Lauren Richards look at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, hosted by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Carson Ebert, Alex Leff, Evan Whitis and Wu Sili discuss the famous "Miracle on Ice", when the United States ice hockey team shockingly defeated their counterparts from the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Michael Ackerman, Joe Bagwell, Madison Rice and Alex Winkler examine the corruption surrounding the FIFA World Cup.

Zoe Doubles, Sam Goldizen, Jon Jones and Parker Selin produced this podcast episode, a fictional sports history show examining the popularity of women's baseball in the mid-twentieth century United States

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 superhero blockbuster Black Panther in light of the holiday.

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?

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.

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 about the use of that term, the role of prominent revolutionary figures in American politics and celebration of the revolutionary generation in American History.

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 professors build syllabi; how do we knit ideas together and how do we address practical concerns about work load and time management into the structure of our planned course work?

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 to alternate histories.

Tara and John return for our first podcast in 2018 to talk about how they utilize the intensive “CentreTerm” class as a platform for experimenting with topics and pedagogy. Tara discusses her brand new class on alternative histories and John discusses his class on history and video games, which he is teaching for the third time in four years.

Join us to hear about how why we think the winter term is a good fit for trying new ideas. We have our students for three hours every day, and our class is the only one they are taking for sixteen class days. It is very challenging… and can get very tiring in a hurry… but the experience can lead to very rewarding results.

John and Tara got together before Fall Break and all the wild times that entails (eh…. grading, actually) to talk about Columbus Day and Northern Ireland’s Marching Season. What kind of factors motivate people to commemorate certain events or people, and why do we choose to use public space to do it?

John and Tara get together to talk about author Colson Whitehead’s visit to Centre's campus this past week and why his award-winning novel The Underground Railroad is so interesting as a contribution to wider historical discussion, our preparation for the semester to come, and some historical context for discussion of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Jon Earle welcomes Centre student Evan Aroko to discuss representations of Africa in film, specifically around the upcoming release of the Marvel Studios film Black Panther. The film offers of a new and interesting framework for interpreting narratives of violence and Western intervention in Africa, and also fits into a specific present-day context of representations of race in American and Western media. Evan Aroko also shares how these narratives influence his own work.

Tara and John talk a little baseball in this episode of the Centre Trail podcast, before Tara hits the road, if only for a few minutes, to visit our colleague Sara Egge for some historical context on how Americans experience and talk about natural disasters.

Tara and John sit down to discuss memory in the classroom. We talk about personal memories of the September 11 attacks and relate it to our process in the classroom for creating connections to students. It raises a lot of interesting questions, not least of which the problem of historians’ need for distance from a topic conflicting with our students’ expectations. Tara talks us through Stephen Dove’s recent piece on DACA for the site, we chat a little about events in class, and John gets to gush about Stranger Things for a couple of minutes.

John and Tara get together on Labor Day to reflect on the first week of the Fall Semester and talk about how we approach our students to start a term. Along the way we talk about specific approaches to early classes, a little bit of history of the Labor Day holiday, and the mythical medieval ruler Prester John. We also talk a little bit about the history of North Korea to give some context to recent events.