By Jen Giambrone, Historian It’s HAI’s 40th anniversary! Founded in 1981, History Associates Incorporated has grown and evolved quite a bit over the past four decades. Our founders, historians Phil Cantelon, Richard Hewlett, Rodney Carlisle, and Robert Williams, realized that …
Saving Super Mario Maker
By Margaret Long, Archivist The videogame industry is ever-evolving and ever-growing. With each passing day, a new game enters into existence and while another is seemingly forgotten. The industry has changed drastically over the years, yet it has also kept …
The World Was Wide Enough: Hamilton and the Growing World of Historical Musicals
By Margaret Long, Archivist In 2015, Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical, Hamilton took Broadway—and the world—by storm. What started off as a hip-hop/R&B musical about Alexander Hamilton’s life has turned into a smash hit that has played to sold-out audiences for …
GameStop: Not the First Rodeo of Charging Bulls and Raiding Bears
By Mike Reis, Senior Vice President The current rodeo of the GameStop bulls versus the hedge fund bears is tearing up any remaining old cobblestones on Wall Street, not to mention the sheer capacity of the stock markets and its …
Showtime in Harpers Ferry: Separating Fact from Fiction in The Good Lord Bird
By Scott Vierick, Historian Since HAI’s three-part blog series on the story of John Brown, millions of people have tuned into Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, about Henry “Onion” Shackleford, a fictional formerly enslaved teenager, and his encounters with the …
“A Pleasant Thanksgiving With Nothing To Do”: A Holiday and a Pandemic
By Jen Giambrone, Historian Back in the spring, when quarantines and stay at home orders still felt new, I wrote a blog exploring reactions to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Now, as Americans everywhere ponder how their Thanksgiving celebrations might look …
Variety is the Pumpkin Spice of Life: A PSL Retrospective
By Mimi Eisen and Colleen Kim, Historians As the days turn colder and darker, we couldn’t let autumn slip away without paying homage to its most iconic bastion: the pumpkin spice latte (PSL). From its sweet, humble beginnings at Starbucks …
Masterpiece Television: Celebrating 50 Years of PBS
By Scott Vierick, Historian Tonight on Frontline. This is Masterpiece Mystery! Let’s build a happy little cloud. Won’t you be my neighbor? Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Fifty years ago, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) …
From Starchives to RED Files: The Depiction of Archives in Film
By Margaret Long, Archivist Archives have long been a part of society’s infrastructure as they contain vital documents, objects, and information about various operations of organizations or even society as a whole. It is no surprise, then, that archives have …
Risky Business: A Brief History of Mechanized Travel and Changing Perceptions of Danger
By James McDonald, former HAI Research Historian, current Ph.D. candidate Travel has long incorporated some assessment of personal safety, but the mechanization of travel complicated this calculus. Concerns about safety have often conflicted with a desire to take advantage of …
But How and In What Balance Weigh John Brown? John Brown’s Raid and Harpers Ferry, Part III
By Scott Vierick, Historian This is the final installment in our three-part blog series about John Brown and his legacy. We recommend starting with parts one and two if you haven’t already. In 1861, less than two years after John …
Crimes of this Guilty Land: John Brown’s Raid and Harpers Ferry, Part II
By Scott Vierick, Historian This is part two of a three-part series on John Brown. If you haven’t already, read the first blog, describing the raid on Harpers Ferry, here. John Brown and other captured raiders would spend the rest …