Witches, witch hunting, and religious dissenters were flashier subjects.īut Ulrich-now the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard-has a habit of looking where others don’t. The event is free and open to the public no registration is required.įew scholars in the 1970s were writing about Puritan culture, and those who did had little interest in the lives of ordinary women. in the Hawkins-Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library. She’ll deliver the keynote lecture, “Reflections on Writing A Midwife’s Tale,” on November 17 at 5 p.m. She’ll also take part in “The Future(s) of Microhistory: A Symposium,” one of this year’s Humanities Projects. This is a fascinating read and worthy of more debate.Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will present “Curiosities: History in Odd Things,” part of the Humanities Center’s Public Lecture Series-this year on the theme of memory and forgetting-on November 16 at 5 p.m. Slogans work when they draw you in and convince you to explore and learn more not if you accept them at easily interpreted face value. “Just say No to Drugs”, “Shock and Awe” and “Make America Great Again” are mind-numbingly inane and absolutely deceptive or self-deceptive. William Henry wrote In Defense of Elitism, "People like small, manageable worlds – hence our enduring fascination with doll houses, our addiction to epigrammatic best-sellers, our attachment to slogans and buzzwords that address complexity without unraveling it.” He wrote that over twenty years ago and the situation has only grown precipitously worse.Īmericans now react to a slogan or tagline to convince them of deeper thinking and reasoned arguments. I am amazed how people gravitate to dumbed-down messaging. Now it honks its ambiguous wisdom from coffee mugs and tailgates." She examines how people have misinterpreted or purloined the line to the point of it becoming a cottage industry but that is not what grabbed me. It sat quietly for years in the folds of a scholarly journal. But in the contest of public attention, slogans usually wins.
The essay was no great hit but the line resonated with an entrepreneur who put it on t-shirt.Īs Ulrich writes, "Serious history talks back to slogans. The author penned the now famous line, "Well-behaved women seldom make history", in an academic essay. In this case we are not talking about a branded product but rather a very real observation and idea. What a great short read on the scary power of a slogan.
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