Four scholars who contributed to Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past dissect the musical’s phenomenon and what it means for our understanding of America’s past. Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical, has become so popular that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is this Broadway musical? And how is the show itself making history?
Video courtesy of C-SPAN’s American History TV
About the Panelists
Renee C. Romano is a professor of history, comparative American studies, and Africana studies at Oberlin College. She is the author of Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America (2003), The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (2006), Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America’s Civil Rights Murders (2014) among other works. She is co-editor of Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (2018).
Claire Bond Potter is a professor of history at The New School. She is the author of War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass Culture (1998) and Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (2020). She is co-editor of Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (2018).
Leslie M. Harris is a professor of history at Northwestern University and is the author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (University of Chicago, 2003). She is a contributing writer to Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (2018).
Jim Cullen is a history teacher at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York and is the author of The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past (1995), The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States (1996) among other works. He is a contributing writer to Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (2018).