Collection Essays

In-depth explorations of humanities topics accompanied by primary source sets and discussion questions

16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Collection Essays

Crossing Borders Across Venetian, Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1500-1800

How did the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Venetian empires interact with each other? How did their competition over southeastern Europe shape these borderlands and their inhabitants?

Edin Hajdarpasic, Loyola University
February 13, 2018

17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Collection Essays

Women’s Fight for Their Inalienable Rights, 1630-1898

Page of text facing an image of a black woman seated at a desk holding a quill pen poised over a sheet of paper.

Cynthia Jurisson, University of Chicago Laboratory School, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution--Chicago Chapter 2017 Newberry Teacher Fellow
December 12, 2017

20th Century, Collection Essays

World War II and American Visual Culture

How did the popular media document the people and activities of the homefront and the battlefront?

Mark B. Pohlad
August 1, 2017

16th Century, Collection Essays

The English Reformation: Tradition and Change

What is the English Reformation? When does the English Reformation begin? When does England become Protestant? Why and how was it accomplished? How is the English church different at the beginning of the sixteenth century and at the century’s end?

Ann Kuzdale
August 1, 2017

16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Collection Essays

Thinking about World History: Historic Maps as Sources

Blue, green, and orange map, centering on a projection from of the globe oriented around the North Pole

What can old maps teach us about world history? What sorts of evidence do they offer, and is displaying evidence the main purpose of these maps, or can they do other things?

Peter Nekola
August 1, 2017

19th Century, 20th Century, Collection Essays

The Colonization of the Black Hills in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, in Historic Maps and Documents

Map of western United States in various colors indicating a variety of resources and their locations.

How can old maps help us understand the complexities of colonization in North America? What sorts of evidence do they offer? Does their distinct styling, framing, and content change how a particular landscape can be represented? Might these elements have in fact aided colonization in the Black Hills?

Peter Nekola
August 1, 2017

20th Century, Collection Essays

Flappers, G-men, and Prohibition’s Legacies

What caused Prohibition and passage of the Eighteenth Amendment?

Rachel Bohlmann
July 19, 2017

20th Century, Collection Essays

Modernism and Chicago

Liesl Olson, The Newberry
May 16, 2017

15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, Collection Essays

The Medieval Spice Trade

How were spices used by medieval Europeans, and why were spices so valuable in medieval Europe?

Sarah Peters Kernan
March 28, 2017

15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, Collection Essays

Religious Change and the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1750

What did the rise and expansion of the Ottoman Empire look like in the eyes of European observers? How did the Ottomans shape the political and religious history of early modern Europe?