Both violent surveillance and disease risk were integral to Atlantic slavery. That same war against Black people continues today.
Tag: History
Buster Keaton Falls Up
Comedy demands a fall guy—someone upon whom the absurdity crashes and yet who emerges unscathed. And in comedy, Buster Keaton remains unrivaled.
The DJ Is a Time Machine
Let’s rupture and reject the “timeline,” a flawed and colonial form of teaching history.
A Communism of Feelings
What role should emotions play in leftist political movements?
Public Thinker: B. R. Cohen on How Food Became “Pure”
“There were so many new laws, I had to make a map showing the spread and intensity of antimargarine laws in states over a quarter century.”
Unruly Objects
By making familiar objects strange, two new books of poetry reveal the limits of overly simple critique.
Public Thinker: Marcia Chatelain on Feminism, Fast Food, and First Gens
“Being in community with people and teaching and learning outside of the confines of our classroom: I still actually really believe in that.”
Free Is and Free Ain’t
Freedom has always been arbitrary in a world, then and now, when the practice of capitalism requires the ongoing erosion of even the most basic rights.
Settler Fantasies, Televised
House-hunting and home-improvement TV shows are premised on the settler fantasy of property ownership—and that fantasy’s relationship to whiteness.
“Somewhere in This Brain”: Memories of Segregation, Soul Music & “Macbeth” with Al Bell
"A song was written through me, and I say that because I didn't write it. The words were given to me."
All the World’s a Page
Paper was never simply a writing surface, but a complicated substance that folded itself into the fabric of culture and consciousness.
What’s in a Name?
Stanley Lieberson wrestled with the problem of causation throughout his prodigious research career, but nowhere more ingeniously than in A Matter of Taste.
Tele-visionary Blackness
Black folks can call into being an alternative relationship to TV, one that prompts a shift in consciousness and just possibly alters the future.
Public Thinker: Geraldo Cadava on the Past and Future of Hispanic Republicans
“I was shocked to learn that Hispanic conservatives celebrate Cortes’s arrival in Mexico.”
Whose Spanish, Anyway?
Policing the borders of the Spanish language was a tool of religious and racial discrimination. Yet Spanish is not inherently imperial.
Democracy’s Long Game: An Interview with Paul Starr
“You have to think … about how you’re going to make the changes stick.”
Reading Against the Line: Translation, Fascism, Erasure
I’m just wary of the tendency to glorify revolutionary violence and masculinity.
The False Hopes of Homeownership
The American Dream of private home ownership has fueled a system that preys on Black people for profit.
The Kleist We Need
Heinrich von Kleist teaches how to resist heteronormativity, as well as how to imagine gender fluidity and a less restrictive masculinity.
Patricia Banks on Supporting African American Museums
Studies of museum patronage mostly focus on social class. That's not the whole story.
