Spark Igniting conversations
explore

Spark Articles

Filter

By Discipline

By Initiative

By Collaborator

Featured Articles

  • A group of 7 people posing together in front of double doors.

    June 6, 2025

    Sharing Your Research and Expanding your Professional Profile

    For many students, historical research is a solitary pursuit with hours spent researching and writing, resulting in a paper that might only be read by a professor or a small group of peers. Historians, however, do not work in isolation, but  are part of a broader community with which they share their research through articles, books, and conference presentations.
  • Black and white photo of school children posed for a class photo.

    June 2, 2025

    ASU Works with the Eastern Arizona Museum to Recover Lost History

    Through a new digitization project, the Eastern Arizona Museum and the Public History Program are preserving local history and asking the public to help identify forgotten faces in a growing digital collection.

    By Giovanni Barberio

    Published June 2, 2025 History Public History Faculty Katy Kole de Peralta Students Holly Barnard/Lily Crigler/Jaden Hallisey/Giovanni Barberio

    What if a single story could help rewrite a piece of Arizona’s history?
  • History

    March 19, 2025

    Modern Still-Life: Echoes of the Digital Age

    Lane Wallace is a dedicated high school teacher with a background in psychology, law, and history, bringing real-world insights into his College & Career Readiness and Intro to Law classes. With experience teaching subjects ranging from World and U.S. History to Drama, he emphasizes practical applications to equip students with essential life skills.
  • History People standing in ruins of a large stone building.

    March 18, 2025

    Tips and Tricks for Archival Studies

    This post reflects on the author’s experience conducting research in Scottish archives, describing the surreal joy of working with centuries-old documents. It offers advice for graduate researchers, emphasizing the importance of taking breaks, recognizing when to shift focus and accepting the challenges of finding original sources.
  • History A large, multistoried, light colored stone building with a turret and spire.

    March 12, 2025

    Researching, Refocusing, and Developing a Topic

    John Cardoza is a retired attorney and 2023 online MA graduate. After an initial, unfinished foray into graduate history at UCSB in the late 1970s, he attended law school at UC Davis and was employed in Ventura County as a prosecutor and family law attorney.
  • History

    February 27, 2025

    The Cultural Power of Barbecue among Enslaved Americans

    Brigitte Brown completed the history MA capstone in the summer of 2024. Her defense video examines barbecue culture among slaves in the Antebellum southern United States. Drawing from a rich collection of oral histories, she explores how barbecue functioned as an important meal created by and for black enslaved Africans.
  • History typed letter

    February 21, 2025

    Archival Research and the Importance of Physical Documents

    This post by Glenn Summers delivers a tactile and analytical discussion of some sources on the 1913 strike at Leith Docks, a key event during the UK’s Great Labour Unrest. These sources were discovered during the Scotland Archives Experience in June 2024.
  • HistoryPhilosophyReligious Studies

    May 29, 2024

    How to Write a Book: Advice from a Professor

    Dr. Katherine Bynum is an Assistant Professor and historian with a focus on Black and Brown freedom struggles. Currently, she is working on her book, Unite and Be Free: The Formation of a Multiracial Coalition against Police Brutality in Dallas. We sat down with her and asked how she created her book.