Family history opens a way to study memory, emotion, power, and connection. It gives historians a flexible method for understanding slavery and migration, religious conversion, and cultural memory.

Reunion 007: Oral History with Farina King

In eighteenth-century England, not every family story turned on courtship and heirs. Many households were held together by single adults who managed budgets, cared for nieces and nephews, and kept the letters and ledgers that became a family’s memory. Their lives were both social and practical. Music in the

Reunion 006: Sibling Bonds and Lateral Kinship with Amy Harris

In eighteenth-century England, not every family story turned on courtship and heirs. Many households were held together by single adults who managed budgets, cared for nieces and nephews, and kept the letters and ledgers that became a family’s memory. Their lives were both social and practical. Music in the

Reunion 005: Ula Y. Taylor: Gender and Power in Family Relationships

In the 1930s, while her husband, Elijah Muhammad, was imprisoned, Clara Poole (later known as Clara Muhammad) quietly stepped into leadership. She wasn’t given a title. She didn’t stand at a pulpit. But she taught the children, organized the women, and held the Nation of Islam together. In

Reunion 004: Social Standing, Identity, and Material Culture with Laura Arnold Leibman

In a quiet attic in New York, Blanche Moses carefully preserved two miniature ivory portraits. She believed they depicted her noble Jewish ancestors, that is to say, in the best light possible: refined, European, and elite. For Blanche, these portraits were more than heirlooms. They were proof of belonging, of

Episode 003: Writing About Your Own Family’s History with Blair L.M. Kelley and Kellie Carter Jackson

In the red clay fields of Georgia, a man named Solicitor rose before dawn to tend the land he did not own. He was a sharecropper, a laborer, and a father. His name was passed down along with stories of endurance and pride. Generations later, his great-granddaughter, Blair Kelley, would

Episode 002: Family, Race, and Memoir with Annette Gordon-Reed

In the quiet hours before dawn, a pregnant young woman named Sally Hemings prepared to leave Paris. She was just sixteen. For nearly two years, she had lived in the bustling French capital as an enslaved worker in Thomas Jefferson's household. In France, slavery was illegal. She could

Welcome to Reunion: A Podcast About Family History and Why It Matters!

See who our first guest is at the bottom of this post! Family history is often treated as a record of names and dates. In this series, we take a different approach. We ask what family history can teach us about the past and why it continues to shape the

Episode 1: Genealogy and Power with Karin Wulf

In a Virginia courtroom in the mid-seventeenth century, a woman named Mary Aggie stood before a judge not to defend herself with a lawyer, but with lineage. She traced her ancestry back to a free woman, arguing that her own enslavement was unlawful. Her case rested not on testimony or