Matthew Dennis
@matthewdennis.bsky.social
Historian of early America, US culture, politics, and environment, and American public memory; author most recently of American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory (2023) and American Blood: A History of Spectacle and Power (forthcoming 2027).
Check this out: www.thenation.com/article/soci... I started at Irvine less than a decade after it was founded and received a fabulous university education. My tuition? About $600 per year (called "fees" not tuition), all of it abated by a California state scholarship. What a concept: affordability.
The Promises and Compromises of the University of California
I grew up in a neighborhood manufactured by the University of California, Irvine. It felt like a utopia for academics—until the university forsook its mission of serving the public.
thenation.com
Our Sacred Third Amendment mjdennis.substack.com/p/our-sacred... In a just world, the Second Amendment would be as irrelevant as the Third.
Our Sacred Third Amendment
In a historical vein: What the Third Amendment, in all its obscurity and irrelevance, says about our Constitution, those who misunderstand and fetishize it, and what we might make of it.
mjdennis.substack.com
A new substack post, on the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, and the perils of making political "sense" of the senseless.
Blood Will Out: On the Elusive Meaning of an Icon
In a Historical Vein: What should we make of the new Charlie Kirk statue, with its red patina?
mjdennis.substack.com