HISTORIAN'S EYE
Matthew Frye Jacobson (Yale University)
“The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
—Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 1, 2010
4:00-6:00 PM
Dept. of Social & Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003
Beginning as a modest effort in early 2009 to capture the historic moment of our first black president’s inauguration in photographs and interviews, the “Our Better History” project and the Historian’s Eye website have evolved into an expansive collection of some 1300+ photographs and an audio archive addressing Obama’s first term in office, the ’08 economic collapse and its fallout, two wars, the raucous politics of healthcare reform, the emergence of a new right-wing formation in opposition to Obama, the politics of immigration, Wall Street reform, street protests of every stripe, the BP oil spill, and the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide. In addition to catching this moment like a firefly in a mason jar, the project seeks to encourage a new relationship to history itself—a mental habit of apprehending the past in the present and history-in-the-making.
Matthew Frye Jacobson is professor of American Studies, History, and African American Studies at Yale and author of five books in the areas of immigration, race, empire, and US political culture.
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