Tag Archives: history

Five Questions with Randi Hutter Epstein, MD

Posted on by
Reply

by Victoria Sollecito

Randi Hutter Epstein is the author of new book, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. Epstein has an MS from The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine. She is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia and has written for the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, Parents, and Harper’s Bazaar as well as numerous other newspapers and magazines. In Get Me Out, Epstein uses her medical knowledge and investigative skills to take an historical (and humorous) look at childbirth through the ages. She spoke to the Women’s History graduate students earlier this month and sat down with Re/Visionist to talk about the birth of her first book. Continue reading →

Quote Roundup: Latina Legacies

Posted on by
2

Last month I posted a “Quote Roundup” from the memoir Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era and following that I posted one of my favorite Barbara Smith quotes. To backtrack, I’d like to introduce “Quote Roundup” as a quick way to show our readers how historians and other thinkers and activists before us have struggled with similar issues that we have. These ideas inspire us to continue having difficult dialogues. This week’s Quote Roundup is from Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol’s Latina Legacies, a book we all (RE/VISIONIST staffers) read in Lyde Cullen Sizer’s Visions/Revisions in U.S. Women’s History class. Continue reading →

More on the Texas Textbook Controversy

Posted on by
1

The Washington Post reports:

Because the Texas textbook market is so large, books assigned to the state’s 4.7 million students often rocket to the top of the market, decreasing costs for other school districts and leading them to buy the same materials.

Historian Eric Foner sat down with Stephen Colbert to discuss the Texas Board of Education’s recently approved changes to social studies curriculum.  Watch Foner and Colbert here!

Read Foner’s full article in The Nation: “Twisting History in Texas”

Sign a petition here: CREDO action

– Rosamund Hunter

The Texas Textbook Takeover

Posted on by
Reply

The Texas Board of Education just approved measures to change the curriculum in history, economics, and sociology.  The New York Times reports:

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Continue reading →