The History Learning Project, a project developed by Indiana University faculty members to document and improve student learning in the discipline of history, is the subject of a feature article this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Over the past 20 years or so, scholars have delved deeply into the racial ideologies that became influential in the early 1900s and helped facilitate the rise of Nazi Germany. But has the pendulum swung too far? A conference this weekend at Indiana University Bloomington will examine the limits of the "racial state" model in explaining Germany's Third Reich and explore the role of other factors, such as nationalism and ethnic and class issues.

In its September 2009 issue, the Indiana Magazine of History offers five essays commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard C. Wade's seminal book in Midwestern and urban history, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790-1830.

Indiana University Bloomington holds more than 560,000 audio and video recordings and film reels, many of which are historically significant, all of which are actively deteriorating. And the window of time to save these materials is closing fast.

The exhibit "In the Shadow of Cortés: From Veracruz to Mexico City" will open at 5 p.m. Friday (Oct. 2) at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, 416 N. Indiana Ave. at Indiana University Bloomington.

The Journal of American History marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln with a special issue of Lincoln history and historiography. Historian Matthew Pinsker writes in a state-of-the-field essay that "there has never been a more active or creative period in Lincoln studies."

An IU professor has discovered and reconstructed a lost first chapter in the history of television. In a new book, Mike Conway tells the stories of a mostly unknown group of CBS employees who worked in obscurity to develop a new way to deliver the news.

Indiana University's efforts in social studies teaching have been recognized by a $165,422 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to two Bloomington campus centers.

A special issue of the Indiana Magazine of History includes articles from an Indiana University Bloomington conference on the controversial series of murals painted by artist Thomas Hart Benton for the Indiana Hall as part of the Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition in 1933.

Military coups used to be a regular occurrence in Latin America, but the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya early Sunday was quite different from those of the past, said Jeffrey L. Gould, a Central America expert at Indiana University Bloomington. The primary difference: the United States, along with virtually every other nation, has condemned it.

We all have a mental picture of the sights that greeted European settlers when they first encountered the American West. But what about the sounds? In the June 2009 issue of The Journal of American History, historian Sarah Keyes describes how overlanders imposed their own aural environment on the native peoples and natural landscape as they crossed the continent from east to west.

John Hanson, an associate professor in the Indiana University Bloomington Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2009-10 academic year. Hanson will use the fellowship to complete a book, tentatively titled Islam, Schooling and the Public Sphere: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Ghana, West Africa.

Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov lived the life of a typical Russian merchant of the late 1700s and early 1800s, but with a major difference -- he wrote it all down. David L. Ransel, the Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, has used Tolchënov's detailed diary to produce a revealing book about a segment of Russian society that had been largely ignored by historians.

IU history professor Klaus Mühlhahn is the author of Criminal Justice in China: A History, published this month by Harvard University Press. The first comprehensive examination of the Chinese criminal justice system from late imperial times to the present, the book relies on unprecedented research in Chinese archives, including classified materials, and incorporates prisoner testimonies, witness reports and first-hand interviews.

In July 1937, women working in a WPA sewing room in Tampa, Fla., staged a sit-down strike. While short-lived and unsuccessful, the strike yielded lessons about issues of gender, race and labor in the New Deal era, says an article in The Journal of American History, published by the Organization of American Historians at Indiana University Bloomington.

The March 2009 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History leads with an article by Bloomington writer and cabinetmaker Nancy Hiller on the history of the Hoosier Cabinet. Hiller places the national success of the free-standing kitchen cabinets, hugely popular from the 1910s to the 1930s, within the context of the scientific homemaking movement and the rise of product marketing and sales techniques.

Carol E. Anderson, a leading historian of the international dimensions of the U.S. civil rights movement, will present the 2009 Paul V. McNutt Lecture on Tuesday, March 10, at Indiana University Bloomington. The Emory University professor will speak on "Allies of a Kind: India and the NAACP's Alliance to End Racial Oppression in and from South Africa, 1946-1951."

The Journal of American History has inaugurated series of quarterly podcasts, beginning with an interview of historian James Meriwether, whose article "Black Voters, Africa and the 1960 Presidential Election" appears in the December 2008 issue.

Though usually viewed as an adversary to organized religion, Indiana University sex researcher Alfred Kinsey had a complex relationship with religious leaders of his time, according to the cover article in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of American History, published at IU Bloomington.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's failing health could present an even greater challenge to the next president than his diplomatic exploitation of his country's nuclear weapon's program, according to an Indiana University historian who has written extensively on the Asian nation.

The September 2008 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History leads off with an article on the little-known role played by bicyclists in the presidential election of 1896, which pitted Republican William McKinley against Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Author Michael Taylor argues that cyclists -- lobbying for good city streets and rural roads -- became a political force in the elections of the 1890s.

Alex Tipei, a graduate student in history at Indiana University, is one of 44 Jacob K. Javits fellows named this month by the U.S. Department of Education. The fellowships are awarded to graduate students in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz, a doctoral student in history at Indiana University Bloomington, has been named a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow for the 2008-09 academic year. She is one of 29 students at U.S. universities to be awarded the fellowship, announced by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Thomas Hart Benton's Indiana murals have provoked strong public responses for 75 years, ever since the artist created them for the Indiana Hall at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. An April 25-26 conference at Indiana University Bloomington, where the murals have been displayed since 1940, will examine their artistic and cultural impact and their role as public art on a public university campus.

The March 2008 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History offers two articles on the lifework and legacy of Rev. Oscar McCulloch, nationally known pastor of Indianapolis's Plymouth Congregational Church from 1877 until his death in 1891. One looks at the evolution of McCulloch's views on poverty in the last years of his life. The other examines his influence on the eugenics movement in the early 20th century.