Reverb Effect

In this episode of Reverb Effect , we follow the journey of Ugandan cultural artifacts from removal to repatriation, and what happens when they return home. Tracing historical materials and their layered afterlives as they moved from colonial Africa to the Cambridge Museum  and back to the Uganda National Museum, we explore how collecting trajectories stripped objects of meaning, and how present-d...

What happens when a neighborhood tells its own story? In this episode of  Reverb Effect , we step into Detroit's Woodbridge neighborhood to hear firsthand accounts of resilience, memory, and change – from postwar life and the 1967 uprising to art, activism, and shifting pressures of today. Cheyenne Pettit received her PhD in History in 2025 and is now Assistant Professor of History at Missouri Sou...

Nationalism. Emerging technology. Militarization. Destroyed bodies. Total war. In this episode, three historians reconsider the dominant themes of the First World War—which are as relevant today as they were a century ago. Cheyenne Pettit studies Canadian and British conflicts over the treatment of venereal disease during World War One. Matthew Hershey 's research explores meanings and experiences...

Archives are central to the work of historians. But they are not just for scholars. In this episode, we talk with an archivist, an archival theorist, and a historian, all working to democratize these spaces, what they hold, and who can access them.  Professor Patricia Garcia  will help us think about the archives through a critical lens. Archivist  Brian Williams  will help us understand how to bu...

One person, missionary EW McDowell, influenced the fate of Syriac Christians ahead of the US Immigration Act of 1924. In this episode, Hannah Roussel interviews James Wolfe about McDowell, whose writings and testimony before Congress opened up the dialectics about the nature of the category "Asiatic."

Alexander McConnell talks with Olga Medvedkova, a Soviet antiwar activist whose arrest garnered worldwide attention in 1983. In light of the two-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, what can we learn from Medvedkova and the Soviet peace movement?

Join Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777 as he waits, in an aristocrat's antechamber in Munich, for a conversation that could change his life. What did it mean to wait in the past? Who waited? How did it shape society and culture, and how did it define social interactions?

In this episode, Paige Newhouse interviews Jason Young, co-curator of  Hear Me Now: the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina , a traveling exhibit housed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art centering enslaved artisans and the stoneware they produced.

The funerary inscription of Clesippus tells an impressive story of illustrious honors and administrative achievements in Ancient Rome. But there is another story, one of a man who navigated slavery, disability, and the sexual advances of the woman who owned him.

In 1911, a contested horse race sparked one of the largest movements by Black South Africans to reclaim colonized land. How does the history of the Native Farmers Association offer a glimpse into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa?

What happens when ten Puerto Rican men try to register to vote in 1950s Connecticut? Their eligibility is contested, and Democrats and Republicans become embroiled in a heated debate that ends at the Connecticut Superior Court. The ten Puerto Rican men, however, get lost at the wayside … we don't even know all ten of their names. How much of their story can we uncover? In this episode, public hist...

In 1836, two tailors transformed the fashion industry forever when they opened the first chemiserie , a shirt store, in Paris. Their radical feat? They tailored a shirt. In this episode, John Finkelberg tells the story of how Monsieurs Pierret and Lami-Housset essentially invented the precursor to the modern button-down shirt. Within a few years, these garments were one of the most sought-after lu...

In medieval London, survivors of the Black Death found themselves living in a world that was both very familiar and also very different. The loss of so many people created a severe labor shortage, forcing employers to raise wages. With higher wages, more people could purchase more items, live in spacious homes, and employ domestic workers to help care for these spaces and possessions.  In the cent...

Why do we have the prenatal visit schedule that we have today? Where did it come from? What was the evidence for the recommended schedule of prenatal visits, and why hasn't the schedule changed in nearly 100 years, despite medical advances? How can doctors amend that schedule to both increase equitable access to healthcare and keep parents and babies safe?  During the Progressive Era, high infant...

The adventure began in 1961, when Leo Sarkisian and his wife Mary were living in West Africa. They traveled across the region documenting traditional and pop music for Tempo Records. But one day, Edward Murrow came to Guinea and asked if Leo would be willing to join the Voice of America.  Leo Sarkisian signed up and in 1965 created  Music Time in Africa , which has continued for more than 50 years...

Beatrice was fifteen years old when her mother died. By day, she assumed her mother's role as the caregiver and housekeeper for her family in Chicago. By night, her father used her as a sexual substitute for his deceased wife. The rape and incest continued in secret for two years, until Beatrice appealed to the Chicago Municipal Court for protection in 1915. The court convicted Beatrice's father o...

Michael sat in the intake room, waiting for his friend to arrive. He didn't expect family to visit. By then, his mother had passed and he was estranged from his father. Without other visitors, he was eager to help his new friend, sociologist and criminologist Clifford Shaw. Shaw had taken an interest in the boys at the St. Charles School for Boys, and asked Michael to write down his life history s...

When disappearances along the migrant routes through Mexico skyrocketed in the 1990s and early 2000s, largely due to the domino effect set off after changes in regional border policy, mothers of the disappeared came together once again. What began as an expedition to locate their children, marching from embassies to migrant shelters to public markets with photographs of the missing, has now become...

In the seventeenth century, Spaniards understood Purgatory to be as much of a place—indeed one capable of being seen and even visited—as its newly established colonies in the New World. Otherworldly spaces like hell, purgatory, and limbo became part of a "colonizing imaginary," a worldview that included the cartographic project of mapping and claiming places and peoples far beyond Iberian shores. ...

On August 2, 1589, the King Henri III of France was assassinated. In a series of accusations that pointed to his policies, his pastimes, and his desires, they called Henri a sodomite. Sodomy accusations gesture towards the unchristian and unmanly comportment of the accused. And yet the content of sodomy accusations has changed much over the past millennium. By attending to the moments of congruenc...

This year marks the opening of Il Museo Italo Africano, "Ilaria Alpi" or the Iliaria Alpi Italo-African Museum in Rome, Italy. A revival of the former Italian Colonial museum (1923-1971), it has been renamed for its present-day reinstallation. Colonial museums and their collections are tangible representations of the historic and unequal relationships between people, communities, and nations. What...

Since Donald Trump stepped into the political spotlight, many have likened him to Archie Bunker, star character of the 1970s sitcom  All in the Family . The comparisons were based on the crude demeanor, the vulgarity, and the racist and misogynistic views. The comparison seems apt. While the two men certainly shared some unfavorable characteristics, many of those who made the comparison focused on...

Los Angeles's international reputation was on the line. As they prepared to host millions of visitors to the city for the 1984 Olympic Games, planners expressed their anxieties about one issue in particular—crime. To ensure a successful, safe event, planners opted for a massive display of police power. As athletes, spectators, and press from around the world arrived in the city, they would be watc...

Migrant detention at the US border is not new. While it's become common in 2020 to hear of the incarceration of men, women, and children at the border attached to the current administration, these policies have been in development for the past 40 years. Over time we've seen the shifting legal, political and cultural definitions for people who arrive from Central America and Cuba. We've seen the tr...

Matt Villeneuve details the simultaneous intrigue and frustration that comes from discovering an interesting source with minimal detail. He explains the winding path of constructing a story—from the mysterious nature of a single clue to the sometimes serendipitous breakthroughs of the archive. The clue was a note, tucked away in a digitized letter, referencing a 1969 illustration of an indigenous...