Check out the latest from Insights, the Kluge Center's blog

The last couple months have been busy at the John W. Kluge Center. We've held public events on black lives in the 19th century, the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I, and women of color in the arts. And we've got another great one coming up March 21 on political polarization. An email with more details on that event will be coming, but in the meantime you can get free tickets here.

We've also published a number of interesting blog posts highlighting the work of our brilliant scholars. If you haven't had a chance to read them all, it isn't too late.

Distinguished Visiting Scholar Adam Rothman created a remarkable series of podcasts on black lives in the 19th century. One episode of the podcast tells the story of Omar Ibn Said, the man who left behind the only known autobiography of an enslaved person in the U.S. written in Arabic. Listen here.

Another episode talks about the life of Robert Pinn, African American Medal of Honor winner for his service in the Civil War, who submitted an autobiographical essay to a left-handed penmanship contest. Listen here.

In the final episode, Rothman talks about Adeline Henson, an African American woman who makes an ephemeral appearance in the Library of Congress's Manuscript Collections through two photographs, a bill of sale, and a letter. Listen here.

Rothman also wrote a post about an enslaved man's letter to his master, a U.S. president. Read it here.

L. Marvin Overby, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, wrote for Insights about "Elections that Echo," the most significant congressional elections in American history. Those elections range from the 1789 race between James Madison and James Monroe to the 2000 primary race in Illinois's 1st District that then-unknown politician Barack Obama lost, just eight years before he would be elected president. Read the post here.

In another post, Dan Turello spoke with Kluge Center Scholars Council Member Christine L. Borgman. Borgman is the Distinguished Research Professor and Presidential Chair Emerita in Information Studies at UCLA, and the author of more than 250 publications in information studies, computer science, and communication. Borgman and Turello discussed the way we think about data, ethics around data collection, and the importance of context in understanding data. Read the post here.

Also on our blog, you can watch Drew Gilpin Faust - historian, former Harvard University president, and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War - deliver her speech accepting the 2018 Kluge Prize. Watch here.