Essay Peter Singer on Consider the Turkey November 19, 2024 In this Q&A, Peter Singer discusses a few things consumers may want to know about factory farmed turkey heading into the holiday season. Read More
Essay How to solve a refugee crisis November 13, 2024 There are always some good people who try to help out when disaster strikes. Tents, blankets, medicine and food enable refugees to survive at a minimal level. But none of this solves the underlying question of what to do with them if they can’t or won’t return to their homelands. Read More
Essay Protecting or punishing women through an ‘empire of purity’? November 13, 2024 Debates over women’s right to bodily autonomy and how the government might best protect women marked the 2024 US presidential race. Read More
Essay StepUP: University Press Week 2024 November 11, 2024 As I write with anticipation for this year’s University Press Week, and the support and superpowers of this community it celebrates, we’ve just closed our seventh grant cycle for Supporting Diverse Voices book proposal grants. Read More
Essay The politics of piety November 07, 2024 Christianity is often viewed as an alternative to Roman religion. But in many ways, Christianity was an expression of Roman religion. Read More
Interview Eric Storm on the rise and evolution of nationalism October 28, 2024 Is nationalism more alive than ever? Eric Storm, author of “Nationalism,” discusses the nature and evolution of nationalism, from the early modern era to the present. Read More
Essay Monuments on fire October 23, 2024 In October 2023, one monument met its end for the sake of another. A bronze equestrian statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee that had stood in Charlottesville, Virginia since 1924 was sent to the furnace to be melted down, piece by piece, and formed into uniform rectangular ingots. The developing afterlife of the Lee statue is part of another history—one that transcends the American context and dates back centuries earlier. Read More
Essay Eugenic fantasies October 17, 2024 The topic of intellectual disability seems frequently to function as a conversation stopper, and establishing the full humanity of individuals with complex developmental impairments has been an ongoing struggle in every nation in the world, including the U.S. Read More
Essay Einstein Papers Project’s newest volume: Einstein wrestles with politics and physics, 1929–1930 October 16, 2024 Since 1987 the Einstein Papers Project, based at Caltech, has been releasing a volume of Einstein's correspondence and papers approximately every three years. Volume 17 finds Einstein living mainly in Berlin, though traveling throughout Europe to attend conferences and receive honorary degrees. Read More
Essay Einstein Papers Project’s editors’ reflections on The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 17 October 16, 2024 Josh Eisenthal, EPP Editor, reflects on Einstein's second meeting with Rabindranath Tagore. Read More
Essay Deep time and the Civil War dead October 15, 2024 In rocky tombs, formed millions of years before Gettysburg, rested the fossilized remains of a riotous wonder of life that had cavorted and gnashed its way through the continent’s primordial seas and landscapes. This lost world had been unearthed piecemeal in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. Read More
Interview Paul Reitter and Paul North on Karl Marx’s Capital October 08, 2024 Paul Reitter and Paul North discuss the creation, reception, and future of “Capital.” Read More
Essay Up from feudalism: the Black American liberal tradition October 03, 2024 What did it mean to be an enlightened “liberal” in the United States before the twentieth century? What’s race got to do with it? Read More
Essay Ungoverning: an unfamiliar name for an unfamiliar danger September 30, 2024 The idea that those entrusted with responsibility for governing a democracy would intentionally make the state less capable—degrading its ability to collect taxes, to deliver mail, to conduct diplomacy, to prosecute violations of civil rights—is almost unthinkable. We call this “ungoverning.” Read More
Essay Narrative images, sacred places September 30, 2024 Close inspection of a "kalamkari" shows the work is exemplary of early modern temple paintings, which in form and subject mirror the concentric enclosing walls of the Hindu temple. Read More
