Op-ed

How One Missing Data Point Can Illustrate a History of Amazigh Exclusion

Elizabeth Pantaleon While many would say that a picture is worth a thousand words, I would argue that one data point can be just as powerful. For that matter, so can the absence of data. An elusive yet illustrative finding that would pack such a punch is the exact cancer incidence rate among Amazigh patients from the Rif region compared to other areas in Morocco. … Continue reading How One Missing Data Point Can Illustrate a History of Amazigh Exclusion

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Interviews

A Conversation with Michael Kazin

Mariam Aiyad Michael Kazin is a historian of US History, writer, and professor in the History Department at Georgetown University. Journalism has always been a key factor in Michael Kazin’s life. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, Kazin wrote and edited for his school newspaper. Later in his early career, he wrote for Leftist underground newspapers. As a member of the Democratic Socialists of … Continue reading A Conversation with Michael Kazin

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Historical Topics, Op-ed

What is Liberia to a US Historian? Bicentennial Reflections Part II

Casey Donahue Few nations’ founding loom so large in the American imagination. In US historiography, the pursuit of the Liberian Republic—begun in the early 1820s and realized in 1847—is perhaps the most highly symbolized origin story of any nation that is not the United States. It appears in our national narratives not as a critical study of African state-building, but as a palimpsest, on which … Continue reading What is Liberia to a US Historian? Bicentennial Reflections Part II

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Historical Topics, Op-ed

An Agreeable Liberian History: Bicentennial Reflections Part I

Casey Donahue Liberia is putting a new spin on an old story. A bicentennial marking the arrival of the republic’s first American settlers has elicited proud nostalgia for the civic values they brought with them; but it also conjures painful memories of the unequal and ethnically stratified society they launched. In their quest to reconcile the anniversary’s contentious dual meanings, Liberian leaders have promoted a … Continue reading An Agreeable Liberian History: Bicentennial Reflections Part I

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Historical Topics, Op-ed

The NBA and the War on Drugs

Mariam Aiyad In July, the NBA dismissed the Toronto Raptors’ rookie guard Jalen Harris for violating the league’s Anti-Drug Program. While reports never specified which “drug of abuse” Harris tested positive for, it is notable that he was not accused of using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to gain an unfair advantage over other players. The NBA targeted him for recreational usage. Harris’s dismissal does not reflect … Continue reading The NBA and the War on Drugs

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Historical Topics

Romance and Nostalgia in the Coffeehouse

Kathleen Walsh On the website for the European Historic Cafés Association, one can find the itinerary for a nostalgic tour of the continent’s historically preserved coffeehouses. The tour spans Western, Central, and Southern Europe, stretching from Greece to Malta, Spain to Denmark. Most of Europe’s historic cafés, however, are within the confines of the former Austro-Hungarian empire—Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary—and they project a nostalgia … Continue reading Romance and Nostalgia in the Coffeehouse

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Historical Topics

Contextualizing “Space” from a Historical Perspective: Tracing the Construction of Cartographic Designs delineating “Us” and “Them”

Krystel von Kumberg Nation-states, as historical sociologist Anthony Smith observed, are “so easily recognizable from a distance, [yet] seem to dissolve before our eyes the closer we come and the more we attempt to pin them down.” As humans, much of how we perceive the world is cartographically suffocated, overly informed by both natural and artificial geographic boundaries. A central feature of the nation-state system … Continue reading Contextualizing “Space” from a Historical Perspective: Tracing the Construction of Cartographic Designs delineating “Us” and “Them”

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Historical Topics

Making Race, Minting Guineas: Why Four Countries Share a Name

John Ramming Chappell In September 2021, a military coup unseated Alpha Condé, Guinea’s president since 2010. The same month, the United States renewed efforts to capture Antonio Indjai, an ex-general and drug-trafficking suspect living in Guinea Bissau. Meanwhile, the U.S. government announced that $27 million seized from Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, Vice President of Equatorial Guinea, would be used to buy COVID-19 vaccines for the … Continue reading Making Race, Minting Guineas: Why Four Countries Share a Name

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Historical Topics

The History of Masculinity in China

Zhanhao Zhang In 2020, during the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, committee member Si Zefu  criticized male teenagers for being too “feminine.” The Ministry of Education responded by promoting physical education and research on the influence of popular culture on the “feminization of male adolescents.” Suddenly, the concept of masculinity (阳刚之气) and its traditional meanings became a hot topic on Chinese social media. Many people, … Continue reading The History of Masculinity in China

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Historical Topics

Finish That Riff: A History of Musical Borrowing in Three Quarter Notes

Casey Donahue Tap your feet to the tempo of a brisk walk—about 110 beats-per-minute, depending on your gait. Now count out measures of four. Next, imagine the warm staccato thud of a bass guitar punctuating the first three quarter notes of each measure. If you loop that beat in your head, you may start to hear something familiar. What you hear is not a test, … Continue reading Finish That Riff: A History of Musical Borrowing in Three Quarter Notes

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