AskHistorians

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What was the perception of Nikolai Gogol in the Soviet Union?	4
Ensembles that played ballroom jazz in the 20s through 40s were often referred to as "orchestras," although they were much smaller than a traditional symphonic or chamber orchestra (for example, Ray Noble's, Lew Stone's, etc). How & why did the term "orchestra" come to be used for small jazz bands?	4
I recently read that Alma Mahler kept a plaster death mask of her husband on display in her house. Was displaying death masks of deceased family members in the home a common practice in early 20th-century Western Europe?	4
The Wikipedia page for Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman says that according to African literature professor Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, the fashion for wearing bustles in 19th-century England was derived from the fetishization of Baartman's body type. Can anyone elaborate on this?	3
Someone on Reddit made an offhand comment about the composer Maurice Ravel having symptoms of OCD. Is there any evidence of this? How severe were his symptoms?	3
How did the phenomenon of youth orchestras come about?	2
I've seen the terms "Scramble for Africa" and "Rape of Africa" used to refer to the same event, but these terms carry very different connotations. Is there any discourse among historians as to which term is more appropriate?	2
Alban Berg's opera "Wozzeck" (completed 1922) and Robert Weine's film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) feature a doctor psychologically experimenting on and manipulating their patients. What elements of post-WWI Austro-German culture may have contributed to this shared element in both works?	2
I saw a post circulating around Instagram that claimed that Hitler based the Nazi concentration camps on how Native American reservations were structured, and modeled the Holocaust off of how Indigenous people in North America were wiped out. Is there any proof of this?	2
How do you feel texting and social media will change the future of historical research?	1

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