On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by signing the final draft of their new proposed government. The document they signed was the United States Constitution, which is why the United States marks...
How do we know what we know about Benjamin Franklin? We know historians, museum curators, and archivists rely on historical documents and objects to find and learn information about the past. But how does a documentary filmmaker present what they...
How do empires come to be? How are empires made and who makes them? What role do maps play in making empires? Christian Koot is a Professor of History at Towson University and the author of A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s...
Have you ever had one of those really interesting conversations where the person was so fascinating that you wished the conversation didn’t have to end? Flora Fraser joins us for one of those conversations. We’ll talk about biography, and in doing...
How do historians and biographers reconstruct the lives of people from the past? Good biographies rely on telling the lives of people using practiced historical methods of thorough archival research and the sound interrogation of historical sources...
Can a biography help us explore big historical questions? Can knowing about the life of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, help us better understand the Supreme Court and how it came to occupy the powerful...
For 34 years, John Marshall presided as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his service, Marshall transformed the nation’s top court and its judicial branch into the powerful body and co-equal branch of government we know it...
Biography. Since the earliest days of the United States, and even before the thirteen colonies came together to forge a nation, Americans have been interested in biography. But why? What is it about the lives of others that makes the past so...