Insights and Impact Research, trends, and action

Insights and Impact

Q&A: The Fabric of Fiction

Les Whitehead, CAS/MA ’25, unravels the Betsy Ross myth and the real history of Philadelphia’s favorite flagmaker

Insights and Impact

The Mother of Reinvention

In her new book, history professor Kate Haulman reveals how Mary Ball Washington was a blank canvas repeatedly refashioned to suit the evolving motives of the nation

Insights and Impact

Hearth and Liberty

Step away from the traditional lore of battlefield heroes and step inside the war-torn American home, where ordinary citizens, servants, and enslaved people navigated the chaotic, deeply personal realities of the war

Insights and Impact

Flagging the Facts

Through an eye-catching installation at the AU Museum, Gail Rebhan uses centuries of changing US Census questions to reveal the evolving, often difficult history of how the nation defines its citizens

Insights and Impact

All in the Family

By uncovering the hidden power of eighteenth-century family trees, historian Karin Wulf, CAS/BA ’85, reveals that early America was built not by solitary individuals, but by deeply interconnected, patriarchal familial webs

Insights and Impact

A Private Life in the Public Eye

From Martha Washington to Melania Trump, SPA’s Anita McBride chronicles how first ladies have balanced personal privacy and intense scrutiny to wield profound political and cultural influence

Insights and Impact

Manual: America’s Other Founding Document

SPA professor Daniel Dreisbach on how the Virginia Declaration of Rights became a blueprint for the Declaration of Independence and revolutionized the way we think about religious liberty

Insights and Impact

America, Documented

Through the lens of history’s most enduring speeches and documents, Planet Word CEO Ann Friedman, SOE/MAT ’98, explores how the power of evolving language literally spoke the American experiment into being

Insights and Impact

3 Minutes on Slang

CAS professor Amelia Tseng explores how slang—from “out of sight” to “6-7”—builds solidarity

Insights and Impact

Audacious Eagle: Page Turner

After championing Black literature through his book club, Sidney Keys III, CAS-Baker/BA ’28, wants to bring representation to the head of the classroom