History Now
39 (Spring 2014)
American Poets, American History
From the Editor
From Virgil to Shakespeare to Walt Whitman, poets have often turned to historical subjects for their topic, preserving historical events and figures in verse. This poetry, in turn, becomes the subject of historical inquiry as scholars explore the context in which the poet lived and the issues of her or his day that resonated with the poet’s choice of a subject from the past. Thus in studying poetry, students can be asked both to examine the poet’s perception of the past and to consider the poet’s own historical moment in time. Because April...More »
The Historian's Perspective


A Poem Links Unlikely Allies in 1775: Phillis Wheatley and George Washington
by James G. Basker
“The New Colossus”: Emma Lazarus and the Immigrant Experience
by Julie Des Jardins
“I, Too”: Langston Hughes’s Afro-Whitmanian Affirmation
by Steven TracyFrom the Teacher's Desk
From the Archives
Essays
- Lincoln and Whitman, by David S. Reynolds
- Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity, by Phillip Lopate
Featured Primary Sources
- Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
- Poem on a Civil War death: “Only a Private Killed,” 1861
- “America the Beautiful,” 1893
Multimedia
For lectures by historians discussing other aspects of literature in American history see the following:
- James Basker on Literature Makes History: How Poets Helped End Slavery
- Andrew Delbanco on The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
- Jill Lepore on Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
- David Reynolds on Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin