Essay Jenny White on the graphic novel and the complicated roots of political violence May 10, 2021 I first arrived in Turkey as a young woman in 1975 to study at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, unaware that Turkey was experiencing a low-level civil war. Read More
Podcast American feminists and the global fight for democratic equality May 03, 2021 Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Read More
Essay Turkish Kaleidoscope musical playlist April 28, 2021 The Turkish Kaleidoscope Musical Playlist is a kaleidoscopic view of the musical backdrop from 1970s Turkey. It explores the music scene of the period, from Anatolian rock & pop to modern & traditional folk music (türkü) and arabesk. Read More
Video Turkish Kaleidoscope book trailer April 21, 2021 Turkish Kaleidoscope is a powerful graphic novel that traces Turkey’s descent into political violence in the 1970s through the experiences of four students on opposing sides of the conflict. Read More
Essay A new vocabulary for social life March 27, 2021 What if we lived in a society where women had the power to make the world anew? What would life look like today if women played a definitive part in governance and had the resources to create sustainable lives? Read More
Essay The hidden economic lives of women March 18, 2021 Women are everywhere in economic life, and nowhere very much in economic history. In Joseph Vernet’s great series of paintings of the 1750s and 1760s, the waterfronts of the ports of France are crowded with women pulling carts and selling fish, talking and bargaining. Read More
Interview Emma Rothschild on An Infinite History February 24, 2021 Marie Aymard was an illiterate widow who lived in the provincial town of Angoulême in southwestern France, a place where seemingly nothing ever happened. Yet, in 1764, she made her fleeting mark on the historical record. Read More
Podcast Listen in: White Freedom February 22, 2021 Available in audio, White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Start listening here. Read More
Interview Book Club Pick: The Fire Is upon Us February 16, 2021 This month’s selection is The Fire Is upon Us by Nicholas Buccola. In this book, Buccola tells the unforgettable story of the historic debate at the Cambridge Union between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. Read More
Essay George Washington’s disillusionment February 15, 2021 Today is Presidents Day, a holiday established in the late nineteenth century to celebrate the greatest of America’s founders, George Washington. By the end of his life Washington himself was hardly in a celebratory mood when he reflected on the state of the country. Read More
Essay White freedom invades the US Capitol February 03, 2021 On January 6, 2021 a violent mob numbering several thousand individuals invaded the United States Capitol Building in Washington DC, seeking not only to physically attack and even murder members of Congress but more generally to impose by force the reelection of President Donald Trump and thus to overthrow the lawfully elected American government. Read More
Podcast White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea February 01, 2021 The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. Read More
Podcast Listen in: An Infinite History January 29, 2021 Marie Aymard was an illiterate widow who lived in the provincial town of Angoulême in southwestern France, a place where seemingly nothing ever happened. Yet, in 1764, she made her fleeting mark on the historical record through two documents. Read More
Essay Sherlock Holmes and the history of information January 28, 2021 Over Christmas week I reread Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I had first read them as a child, working slowly through a worn red volume that contained them all. Read More
Video An Infinite History book trailer January 25, 2021 Watch the book trailer for An Infinite History—an innovative history of deep social and economic changes in France, told through the story of a single extended family across five generations. Read More
