Just another Hamilton lyric, but I’ve been thinking this past week about the history books. I’m not sure how textbooks write about recent history, because I never learned about it in a classroom.
As grateful as I am for my public education, our history teachers never seemed able to cover the entire curriculum. In our US History courses, we’d get so bogged down in the Revolutionary period and the Civil War that we wouldn’t make it past World War II. I remember one beleaguered teacher assigning us to listen to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” so we’d at least know the names of things that happened after 1950. I’ve been wondering this week what those history books will say about our current Supreme Court.
History is important. Here is what our editorial team had to say about the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in light of political history. Amy Frykholm offers a personal reflection on the importance of emotions when we learn history (and the book banning movement’s attempts to control those emotions). Zac Koons explains how artist Marc Chagall’s Exodus brings us face to face with refugees across time.
Email me: Are you a student of history? What have been some of the most important sources for your learning?
“The Century editors see eye to eye on many subjects. The ethics of abortion is not one of them. We agree, however, about Roe v. Wade, a crucial legal protection that empowered people to make such ethical determinations for themselves.”
“For those who are trying to maintain the status quo, feelings can be a problem. Art risks evoking feelings beyond the approved ones of patriotic sentimentality: real feelings, uncomfortable feelings, feelings that spur change.”
“Chagall’s image says something much more pointed to his Western Christian audience: if Jesus is an archetype of Jewish suffering, then the person you claim to be God is actually the refugee you are refusing entry.”
