History Commons^™

The Problems Of Personalism Today, Bennett Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In lieu of an abstract, here is a short excerpt:

I shall speak today, generally and just within my 15 minutes, about the problems of personalism today—that is, its current position in philosophy and its internal stresses that must be addressed to improve that situation. My comments are the first fruits of my next book, now under way, which will develop a renewed humanism on a personalistic basis by reformulating a foundation for personalism. The book will also apply this personalism to the challenges of the Anthropocene and particularly of transhumanism. For reasons I will explain, no one has yet …

Conducting Oral History: Background And Methods, Katrine Barber

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter-length essay describes the practice of oral history through real world examples: the steps to conducting oral history interviews, things to consider when developing a project or an interview plan, and ethical considerations. How oral history has enlarged the historical record and changed scholarly interpretation of the past are highlighted.

Book Review Of, The Nature Of The Game: Links Golf At Bandon Dunes And Far Beyond By Mike Keiser With Stephen Goodwin (Review), William Lang

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 1999, Mike Keiser and his associates welcomed golfers to a new and remarkable links golf course on the southern Oregon coast near the town of Bandon. At the mouth of the Coquille River and small bay some thirty miles south of Coos Bay, Bandon had begun as a mining camp in the 1850s and developed an economy in the late nineteenth century based on fishing, logging, dairying, and cranberry cultivation. The area’s spectacular coastline brought tourists, but nothing quite prepared the town for the advent of world-class golf courses — six in total at Bandon Dunes — and an …

9/11, Culture War, And The Pitfalls Of History, David Horowitz

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

9/11 marks one of the traumatic events of modern U. S. history. Yet its occurrence and aftermath must be placed in the context of social movements and global developments. This presentation focuses on getting past political and social divisiveness. Professor Horowitz has taught at Portland State since 1968, where he won a prize for outstanding achievement in 2007. He is co-author of a U.S. history textbook and has a number of publications to his credit. He is the author of a personal, professional, and political memoir with the title “Getting There: An American Cultural Odyssey.”

No History Or Society To Be Found: Object-Oriented Ontology And Social Ontology, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is widely theorized that the advent of the “Anthropocene Age” (under this or any other name) is bringing one form of human temporality to an end while it initiates another (Simon 2021). Because human activity threatens the duration and well-being of the planetary biosphere, the new age that this activity is bringing on—though it is proving to be extremely difficult to define—does present specific onto-epistemological and moral challenges behind its political and social problems. The most prominent and perhaps the core of these challenges is the demand to shed anthropocentrism in human culture, a change that would deeply alter …

The Cultural Construction Of Racial Identity In Saint-Domingue With Jordan Hallmark, Jordan Hallmark

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Jordan Hallmark (MA, History, '22) discusses the cultural construction of racial identity in late-18th century Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Inspired in part by a historiographic shift known as the “Global Turn,” the last two decades have given rise to a wealth of new studies on the history of Haiti. While these studies have varied in their chronological scope, the colonial and revolutionary periods of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—when Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue—have emerged as an especially fertile ground for interdisciplinary scholarship. Despite the interdisciplinary richness of this emergent historiography, however, students of Haitian history …

Stumptown On Strike With Garrett Palmer, Garrett Palmer

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Garrett Palmer (History, '22) discusses the 1934 Portland Waterfront Strike. The strike has largely been portrayed as "static", where striking workers clashed with the establishment at the hiring halls and the docks of Portland. While that is correct, it is a bit simplistic; we can glean more from the event by considering how urban space, the relationship between metropole and hinterlands, and the role of unconventional groups played roles in the strike. That line of inquiry ultimately showcases that this event was anything but static, as groups like church parishes, the Communist Party, sex workers, …

A Grave Issue-Lone Fir Cemetery, Block 14, And Chinese Exclusion With Charlie Huxley, Charlie Huxley

PDXPLORES Podcast

Lone Fir Cemetery, located in inner Southeast Portland, Oregon, was established in 1855 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Block 14 within the cemetery was a segregated section reserved for Chinese immigrants in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this episode of PDXPLORES,

Charlie Huxley (History, '22) discusses how their research illustrates how community engagement with Block 14 in the nineteenth century was defined by discrimination, aggression, and racism toward Portland's Chinese immigrant community.

Click on the "Download" button to access the audio transcript.

Remarks At The Park Blocks Ceremony Dedicating A Plaque To Commemorate The Psu Student Antiwar Strike Of May 1970, David Horowitz

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Remarks at the Park Blocks Ceremony Dedicating a Plaque to Commemorate the PSU Student Antiwar Strike of May 1970

[Book Review] Female Monarchs And Merchant Queens In Africa By Nwando Achebe, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book review excerpt:

Have you ever heard of small but mighty? Female Monarchs aptly fits that description. Traveling through time and across the African continent in a roughly chronological order, Nwando Achebe uses a slew of case studies to (re)frame and (re)tell the African-gendered narrative in solidly African-centered and gendered terms. Breaking from Western perspectives and relying on distinctly African-derived sources and methods, she weaves together the worlds and experiences of African females who occupied positions of power, authority, and influence. In Female Monarchs, the author not only restores voice and dignity to a people but also places elite …

Blind Spots And Bottlenecks For Philosophy Of History, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Realist history does not meet many human needs. History needs a great deal more philosophy, but of what kind?

In his essay on this blog, "Reflections on Theory of History Polyphonic," Ethan Kleinberg suggests that historians often use theory to block change in their work rather than to advance it. One way they do this, he points out, is to include a little theory in order to inoculate themselves against greater and more fundamental challenges. They give or take a blow, and then hoist up their shield, thereby avoiding philosophy and miniaturizing it into "historical theory."

I cannot …

The West And Congressional Fights Before The Civil War: Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series Post-Lecture Discussion, William L. Lang, Jeffrey Ostler, Stacey L. Smith, Kenneth R. Coleman

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This roundtable conversation was hosted virtually on Thursday, March 18, 2021, as a follow-up to a lecture two days prior. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Blacks In Oregon, Darrell Millner

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Periodically, newspaper or magazine articles appear proclaiming amazement at how white the population of Oregon and the City of Portland is compared to other parts of the country. It is not possible to argue with the figures—in 2017, there were an estimated 91,000 Blacks in Oregon, about 2 percent of the population—but it is a profound mistake to think that these stories and statistics tell the story of the state's racial past. In fact, issues of race and the status and circumstances of Black life in Oregon are central to understanding the history of the state, and perhaps its future …

Undressing For Redress: The Significance Of Nigerian Women’S Naked Protests, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social media went abuzz on July 23, 2020, when hundreds of women – mostly naked – staged a protest in the northwestern state of Kaduna, Nigeria. Wailing and rolling on the ground, they protested at the killing of people in ongoing attacks on their community.

The protesters, mostly mothers, demanded justice and called on the government, security agencies and international community to intervene.

Such naked protests are not new in Nigeria. Traditionally, among the Igbo and Yoruba of Nigeria, stripping naked signifies a curse against those targeted. Sometimes, mothers strip naked to put a curse on their truant sons or …

Circuits Of Mobile Workers In The 19th-Century Central Balkans, Evguenia Davidova

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article compares the geographic and social mobility of two “lesser known” groups of workers: merchants’ assistants and maidservants. By combining labor mobility, class, and gender as categories of analysis, it suggests that such examples of temporary and return migration opened up new economic possibilities while at the same time reinforcing patriarchal order and increasing social inequality. Such transformative social practice is placed within the broader socio-economic and political fabric of the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans during the “long 19th century.”

How Igbo Women Used Petitions To Influence British Authorities During Colonial Rule, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Selected petitions and written correspondence between Igbo women and British officials between 1892 and 1960 shed fresh light on how women navigated male-dominated colonial institutions and structures of the time.

African women acted in varied and complex ways to the situations they found themselves in. This ranged from subtle to overt opposition, and sometimes violent resistance.

One response was through petition writing as women took to the pen to articulate their concerns. In my research, I examined several petitions written by Igbo women to British officials during the colonial period. I found that petition writing was part of the complex …

Repairing Historicity, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper advances a fresh theorization of historicity. The word and concept of historicity has become so widespread and popular that they have ceased to have definite meaning and are used to stand for unsupported notions of the values inherent in human experience. This paper attempts to repair the concept by re-defining it as the temporal aspect of the interdependence of life; having history is to have a life intertwined with the lives of all others and with the universe. After separating out the looser uses, surveying some of the literature, and defining what needs to be done, the paper …

Space And Colonial Alterity: Interrogating British Residential Segregation In Nigeria, 1899-1919, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The policy of segregation is undoubtedly a resented feature of colonial rule in Africa. However, discussions of the residential racial segregation policy of the British colonial administration in Africa invariably focus on “settler colonies” of South, Central, and East Africa. British colonial West Africa hardly features in such discussions since it is widely believed that these areas, which had no large-scale European settler populations, had no experience relevant to any meaningful discussion of multi-racial colonial relationships. Some studies even deny the existence of racially segregated areas in places other than the settler colonies. Despite evidence that residential racial segregation formed …

Commentary On 50 Years Of Teaching At The Psu History Awards Ceremony, David A. Horowitz

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Commentary presented at: PSU History Awards ceremony, June 14, 2019.

Process And Privilege: When It Comes To Renaming Streets, Not All Petitioners Are Treated Equally, Cynthia Carmina Gómez

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

On a rainy afternoon in January 2010, I drove to my old neighborhood in Southeast Portland to attend the César Chávez Boulevard sign unveiling ceremony at Central Christian Church. The event marked the culmination of the effort to rename a major street after the civil rights champion. After saying hello to a few friends, I sat alone in a pew toward the back of the mostly empty space. Light reflected off of the words César E. Chávez Blvd. on the large street sign placed under the dais. I was expecting busloads of school-aged children and families to be there, but …

Public Morality And Ethno-Religious Chauvinism In Nigerian: Why History Matters, Bright Alozie, Ngozika Anthonia Obi-Ani

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Indubitably, history is a branch of knowledge which stretches way back to the beginning of time in human civilization and ipso facto, contributes to the shaping of a society’s past and future as well. As Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) puts it, a people without the knowledge of the past History, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Therefore, since development is a product of change, and the subject matter of history focuses on continuity and change, it follows that development can only be understood and appreciated within the context of history. This article examines the relevance of history …

"We Were At Our Journey's End" : Settler Sovereignty Formation In Oregon, Katrine Barber

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

For too long, Oregon history has been captive to the mid-nineteenth-century’s rambling wagon trains. Settler stories of motivations, hardships, and achievements, preserved in diaries, letters, and memoirs, are compelling and deserving of the attention lavished on them. But more is necessary. Oregon’s Euro-Americans were intimately tied to national and international events that saw the rise of White, European colonial expansion into the colored word. Alongside that expansion was the development of a framework of domination, justified by claims of superiority and destiny, that conflated the ability to control with the right to do so. Placing Oregon history in this larger …

Working Paper No. 01, Three Forms Of Fascism, Lauren Sweger-Hollingsworth

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that fascism can appear in three forms. A classical fascist, a brutal and dominating figure, is autodidactic, having impressive and engaging oratory skills that effectively put forth their ideals to the working-class majority. Neo-fascists, or neo-Nazis, idolize Hitler and the society of Nazi Germany, being extremely radical and militant, they exist in small groups dispersed around the world. A post-modern fascist uses money and various forms of media to spread their ideologies to vulnerable members of society. Post-modern fascists project themselves as hard-working and tough, but they buy loyalty and pay others to do their …

Working Paper No. 02, Marx On British Colonialism In India, Lauren Sweger-Hollingsworth

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Karl Marx offers a penetrating understanding of British colonialism in India. Marx emphasizes that England essentially leveled the entire foundation of Indian society, separating India from its ancient traditions and history, destroying the basis for the regions agriculture, and undermining their manufacturing industries. The Court of Directors, under the authorization of the Crown, appointed the government of India. The administration allocated the country to the highest bidder, cost Indian citizens large sums of money each year, and perpetuated its abuses. Furthermore, the system of taxation was onerous and more oppressive than any other in …

Theory After All, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Comments on #theoryrevolt.

Chandling The Scholar, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a peer-reviewed group blog post on early modern scholarship and pre-modern universities.

The Dreams Of An Inventor In 1420, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Bennett Gilbert peruses the sketchbook of 15th-century engineer Johannes de Fontana, a catalogue of designs for a variety of fantastic and often impossible inventions, including fire-breathing automatons, pulley-powered angels, and the earliest surviving drawing of a magic lantern device.

Invisible Walls Mapping Residential Segregation In Portland, Katrine Barber

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In spring 2018, students in a Portland State University (PSU) course set out to understand how barriers to home ownership among families of color — as well as resistance to those barriers — have historical and continuing influence on our city. Over the previous year, a conversation with Ryan Curren of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, who had contacted PSU’s History Department for research assistance, gave rise to the crowdsourcing of deeds holding restrictive covenants, the PSU class described here, and a partnership with the Vanport Mosaic (vanportmosaic.org) — a local nonprofit that works to amplify, honor, and preserve …

Book Review Of, Embracing A Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849 - 1950 By Ellen Eisenberg, Natan M. Meir

Judaic Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natan M. Meir is the Chair of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. Here he reviews the book "Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849 - 1950" by Ellen Eisenberg.

Book Review Of, Fur Trade Gamble: North West Company On The Pacific Slope, 1800-1820 By Lloyd Keith And John C. Jackson, William L. Lang

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.