Category: Historical Topics

Historical Topics, Op-ed

Why We Should Care About Southeast Asians’ Reactions to the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Part 1

Tim Esau Historians have long shirked moral judgements in their studies, favoring epistemological conservatism. Many fear the unavoidable presentism of moral judgements, thereby appealing to moral subjectivism. Thus, historians dread the damage done to “objective history” by bias or personal preference. One does not need to be an academic to recognize the contemporary preference towards epistemological conservatism which arose after the existential debates over objectivism … Continue reading Why We Should Care About Southeast Asians’ Reactions to the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Part 1

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Historical Topics, research

A Forgotten Greek–Turkish Textbook: Mukālemāt-ı Türkiye-i Rûmiye ve Rûmiye-i Türkiye by Ioannis P. Miliopoulos

Fatma Esen On Sunday, November 2, 2025, Mary Tezak and I wandered through the Feriköy Antique Bazaar in Istanbul, looking for anything connected to our research on Hatay and Trabzon. Deep inside the market, we stopped at one of the largest stalls, crowded with old photographs and press materials. Digging through a box of mixed papers, postcards, newspapers, a wedding card written in Armenian, a … Continue reading A Forgotten Greek–Turkish Textbook: Mukālemāt-ı Türkiye-i Rûmiye ve Rûmiye-i Türkiye by Ioannis P. Miliopoulos

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Historical Topics, History in Popular Culture

The Wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald and its Legacy in the Great Lakes

Madi Campbell November 10, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, and its legacy undoubtedly continues to haunt Lake Superior. Once the largest Great Lakes freighter, the doomed ship was famously immortalized in Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” solidifying its status as a folk symbol. Each year, communities around the lake … Continue reading The Wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald and its Legacy in the Great Lakes

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Historical Topics, Op-ed, State of the Field

A Local History of Hong Kong

Shawn Liu Central Asia has long been imagined less as a place and more as a passage. In travelogues, school maps, and even much scholarship, it appears as a corridor—the Silk Road that carried goods and ideas between “centers” like China, Persia, or Europe. Historian Adeeb Khalid warns against this flattening: to see Central Asia only as a “road between somewhere and somewhere else” erases … Continue reading A Local History of Hong Kong

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Historical Topics, Interviews

An Oral History of a Native Son: The Elaine Massacre and its Living Memory

Patrick Grey On September 30, 1919, Black sharecroppers throughout Phillips County, Arkansas convened in a church in the town of Elaine to discuss fairer cotton prices for the fall sale and plan how to increase Black land ownership among Black farmers. Armed guards stood just outside of the church while white police officers were in a car parked nearby. Not long after the meeting began, … Continue reading An Oral History of a Native Son: The Elaine Massacre and its Living Memory

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Historical Topics, Op-ed

Foreign Tourism Development in Colonized Spaces: From Gaza to the Caribbean

Rosie Click Donald Trump spoke about transforming Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” in a joint press conference with Israel in February of this year. His idea for the “redevelopment” involved forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza while hotels, casinos, beachside resorts, and restaurants were built, presumably by foreign companies. Later in the month, Trump posted an AI-generated video to his Truth Social account … Continue reading Foreign Tourism Development in Colonized Spaces: From Gaza to the Caribbean

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Historical Topics, research

Esperanto, Nationalism, and Bureaucracy in the League of Nations: A Language Caught in the Crossfire

Aidan Pritchard From its humble beginnings as an unnamed language in 1887, to the forefront of the League of Nations’ debate on auxiliary languages, Esperanto – meaning ‘one who hopes’ – has aimed to promote global peace and cooperation. The artificial language’s inventor, Ludwik Zamenhof, had grown up in Bialystok, Poland, a city populated by Poles, Russians, Germans, and Jews. The city’s linguistic barriers exacerbated … Continue reading Esperanto, Nationalism, and Bureaucracy in the League of Nations: A Language Caught in the Crossfire

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Historical Topics

Jianbi Qingye: The Environmental Warfare of the Taiping Rebellion: Walls of War, Fields of Fire 

Shawn Liu The Taiping Rebellion is infamous for being one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, but it was also an ecological catastrophe. While historian John Fincher has described the conflict as a “heavily saturated topic” in historical scholarship, its ecological dimensions remain strikingly underexplored. Beyond the well-documented clashes of ideologies and armies, another form of destruction took place, one measured not in human … Continue reading Jianbi Qingye: The Environmental Warfare of the Taiping Rebellion: Walls of War, Fields of Fire 

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Historical Topics, History in Popular Culture, Op-ed

Beneath the SHEIN Sheen: The Horrors of Ultra-Fast Fashion and Modern Garment Work

Kate Dillard Online shopping is a sport. Scouring the internet for hours and frantically “adding to cart” to lock in those limited-time deals requires stamina and leaves you with a dopamine rush. But in this sport, there are no winners. Behind every trendy top and cheap price tag is a dark backstory. The garment industry has a long history of worker abuse and exploitation, from … Continue reading Beneath the SHEIN Sheen: The Horrors of Ultra-Fast Fashion and Modern Garment Work

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Historical Topics

Cottages and Kittens: The Culture of Comfort

Megan Huang During the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw the rise of what became known as “cottagecore.” Given a name in 2018 by Tumblr users (because who else?), this Zillennial lifestyle aesthetic consisting of sunny days, rolling flower meadows, and flouncy dresses represented an idyllic, bucolic fantasy of young womanhood. When the real world was flooded with daily news updates about … Continue reading Cottages and Kittens: The Culture of Comfort

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