Thanks to All Y'all
Thinking Back on Five Years of Laughing, Crying, and Historicizing
I wanted to provide some perspective on this first post about 5 years of Historians At The Movies and hopefully a bit of appreciation, a dose of humility, and a smidge of the silliness you’ve come to know in my writing. This thing we’ve created has become such a large part of my life and professional career. So hopefully I won’t embarass anyone with this post. I suppose I should also say that inevitably I’ll leave someone or something off this list that I shouldn’t have. Let’s chart that up to my propensity to send in rough drafts and worry about the rest later. Anyway, here are a few thoughts about people or things that have influenced or guided HATM to start the week.
Craig Bruce Smith and Robert Greene II: Long before the first viewing of National Treasure on July 15, 2018 there was a conversation on twitter about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator and whether or not his character Dutch Schaefer was more powerful than John Matrix from Commando. At the I didn’t really know these guys at all but I knew that I liked them. Moreso, that conversation subtly put in my mind that other historians loved movies. When I started to envision what a podcast might look like, I refused to do one until the three of us could have that conversation to set the template. Both guys have been on the pod multiple times now and I hope that they will continue to do so. And you can find the Predator conversation as Episode 14 from March 2023, even though it was the first we ever recorded.1
Jacqueline Antonovich: I think a lot of you know that graduate school was a rough haul for me. I was in my late 30s, going through a divorce, and way far away from my kids. During this time I looked to others for inspiration. Few were and are more inspiring than Jacki. Jacki was also a nontraditional student who was a couple years ahead of me. In addition to being a mother and a student, she also co-created Nursing Clio, which is an open access, peer-reviewed, collaborative blog project that ties historical scholarship to present-day issues related to gender and medicine. In what will become apparent, I think Jacki’s genius is her ability to present history to a wide body of people in a lot of differing ways. Beyond that is her absolute openness about her experiences as scholar, which kept me thinking that if she could get through graduate school, so could I. I cannot imagine how lucky her students at Muhlenberg College are to have her.
Jake Blackwell: I met Jake back in 2015 when I was going through recruitment for graduate school. I was down to Oklahoma, Florida State, and the University of Minnesota. While I ultimately decided on the latter, I remained close with a lot of the people I met on the visit to OU, especially Jake. Over the last few years, he emerged as the conscious of HATM. What you don’t see are the messages I send to him asking about what movies would work well, where we need to develop messages, how we maintain a diverse mix of films that represent the interests of everyone, and so forth. He’ll often suggest films that we show. You probably know if you follow along on Sunday nights that he posts a thread of cast & crew related to the film. It was he who coined the term “the Dunst Threshold,” named after Matron Saint of #HATM Kirsten Dunst, the first person to appear three times. He also created a map of HATM film locations, which you can see here: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jake.blackwell/viz/HistoriansattheMoviesHATM2_0/HATMFilmLocations
Liz Covart: It was Liz who I often thought of early on when I started to consider “what else?” What else could I do? What else could I say? Liz’s terrific Ben Franklin’s World was the first history podcast I ever listened to and it’s still the first history podcast I recommend. To me, Liz’s vision was inspiring. Here’s a scholar who is not a professor at any institution but continues to produce historical content that is available to everyone. Moreso, her platform offers other scholars the opportunity to present their work, which is really important to me. Liz offers others a hand up, including me. More than once she has provided her thoughts and insights about how I can develop both HATM and the HATM Podcast. There is no HATM without Liz. Period.
Fletcher Powell: My guess is that a lot of you don’t know Fletcher. He’s a dear friend of mine and one of the first people I met when we moved to Wichita back in 2010. He’s also the producer of the HATM Podcast. This is a thing he does because I am an idiot when it comes to technology and my sneaking suspicion is that his conscious would not allow this thing to come into fruition without some level of guidance. Fletch cuts and edits each pod, provides thoughts on which order we should release them, and kind of serves as a director of sorts, helping to develop the content on the pod. These things require a TON of work, and HATM is famously a nonprofit enterprise at the moment. The podcast REALLY doesn’t happen without him.
Heather: I’m gonna keep these comments short because I’m wary of her riding my coattails to fame and glory and all, but I don’t believe anyone is doing more for history or the historical profession than Heather Richardson.2 She is a trusted friend, mentor, and guiding force for me and so many others. There is not a person more giving of themselves to others that I can think of.
YOU GUYS or as we say in Kentucky, ALL Y’ALL: So this list is more than five. Well, I suppose I’m not the one you want to come to for consistency. But HATM doesn’t happen unless y’all tweet along to National Treasure. It doesn’t happen if you don’t continue to tweet along for the five years following. And when I decided to shut it down last year, it was the many, many messages of both personal and professional support that convinced me that we were the modern-day Goonies. And Goonies never say die. So we kept going, we started the pod, and yes, have plans for world domination.3 I thank you so much for that. And as for world domination….
Last week’s episode about Kingdom of Heaven featuring David Perry, Matthew Gabriele, John Wyatt Greenlee, and Thomas Lecaque has been a gigantic hit.4 Y’all have apparently loved it since as of this writing, it is currently the #3 most played episode of all-time, trailing Con Air with Kathleen Belew by only three downloads, AFTER FIVE DAYS. What’s more, people have apparently begun to listen to other pods, because older episode numbers are rising. This is only happening because y’all are subscribing and sharing the pod with your friends. Thank you so much for that. We have just an incredible pod dropping this week with Sarah McNamara and I am really excited for you to hear it.5 In the meantime, here’s a link to KoH if you haven’t had the chance:
This week on HATM:
This week is the Historians At The Movies Fifth Birthday Party. It’s gonna be a big night and you’ve requested a big movie. I can’t think of anything better. Looking forward to seeing all the regulars tweeting along. And if you have’t joined in before or even just joined in in a while, what better night to stop in and say hello to your friends. I hope you can make it because this Sunday, July 16th at 8pm eastern, we are livetweeting TITANIC, available on Netflix. See ya there.
Her new book, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (available for preorder)
Step one: eliminate mayonnaise, Pepsi-Cola, and the state of Indiana.
Matt & David’s book: The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe
Here’s Sarah’s new book: Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South
Great idea!