Who Gets to Study Whom?
[no-caption] recep-bg/Getty Images About a decade ago, Chisomo Kalinga was in a bind. The medical humanities scholar, then a graduate student at King’s College London, was looking for…
Tag: history
What Ancient Gender Fluidity Taught Me About Modern Patriarchy
Some figurines, like this one from the La Tolita-Tumaco culture, seem to blend gender characteristics from breasts to loincloths into a possible transgender or nonbinary figure. Museo Naciona…
Why the Whiteness of Archaeology Is a Problem
Most archaeological projects in the U.K. and U.S. are largely conducted by people of European descent. Wessex Archaeology/Flickr One hot, sunny day in the Sonoran Desert, I (William)…
Christopher Kelty’s The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories by Talia Dan-Cohen
The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories Christopher M. Kelty University of Chicago Press, 2020. 344 pages. A book about participation? Chris Kelty’s delightful new bo…
Hush-Hush, a Pale-Horse Cometh: Mirabilis Manducat
[no-caption] PhotoTalk/Getty Images “O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum …” —Saint Thomas Aquinas, 13th Century I did not know well my Uncle-Cousin Ron. He was my mother’s cousin. He…
One
“The sea cannot know itself as yet unborn until the eye of the storm passes above its tumultuous skin, blinking.” I remember when lions came for the weak…
The FBI’s Repatriation of Stolen Heritage
The sewing kit above is one of multiple items from a massive private collection held in Indiana that the FBI helped repatriate. This particular item is now in…
Brushes with racism in Minnesota and why Black lives matter
Black lives matter across any geographical border. My research and my own racial encounters confirm what I have known in my soul: our fates are inextricably linked. And…
Reigniting student activism at UWI
This co-authored op-ed from University of the West Indies, Sociology PhD candidate Nathan Chapman and myself, is meant as a conversation starter about the importance of student activism…
Reigniting student activism at UWI
This co-authored op-ed from University of the West Indies, Sociology PhD candidate Nathan Chapman and myself, is meant as a conversation starter about the importance of student activism…
Can Archaeology Explain the Bread Baking Craze?
[no-caption] Jutta M. Jenning/Flickr As coronavirus social distancing wears on, my social media feeds have changed. Travel photos, parties, and concerts have disappeared, replaced by phot…
Why Are There So Many Humans?
Savanna Pumé (hunter-gatherers in Venezuela) children, shown here building a house, learn to cooperate from a young age. Russell D. Greaves Something curious happened in human population …
Rethinking Easter Island’s Historic “Collapse”
A row of massive anthropomorphic statues on Easter Island. Henrykkcheung/Flickr Easter Island’s colossal statues loom large—both literally and figuratively—in the popular imagination. The…
How to Make Sense of “Traditional (Chinese) Medicine” In a Time of Covid-19: Cold War Origin Stories and the WHO’s Role in Making Space for Polyglot Therapeutics by Helen Tilley
Note: I wrote this for anyone trying to “teach the virus,” something I will soon be doing myself. The question in the title is meant to signal that…
Unearthing the True Toll of the Tulsa Race Massacre
The Booker T. Washington High School parade processes along Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood Cultural Center Just north of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, Greenwood once had one o…
Why Capitalize “Indigenous”?
(no-caption) Alison Wright/Getty Images Ask SAPIENS is a series that offers a glimpse into the magazine’s inner workings. Some readers may have noticed that SAPIENS uses a capital…
Are Pandemics Good for the Environment?
Mountain goats roam the streets of Llandudno, in north Wales, in the absence of tourists. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have noted…
Events of Disruptive Transformation by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon
We have been discussing the prospects of catastrophes of our own making for decades. We have been debating risks linked to anthropogenic climate change and runaway technologies, trying…
How Kings Created Angkor Wat—Then Lost It
The impressive temples at Angkor Wat make it famous—but there is much more to the site. Vincent Gerbouin/Pexels Over a thousand years ago, the ancient Khmer civilization emerged…
Confronting the Colonial Legacies of Museum Collections
Berlin’s Humboldt Forum opened its doors to the public for a special event in 2019, even as construction on the building continued. David von Becker/SHF Art historian Bénédicte…
The Enduring Mystery of the Human-Horse Story
Archaeologists unearth an ancient habitation site in Western Mongolia, seeking clues to the early history of domestic horses. William Taylor This article was originally published at The C…
The UNESCO Site That Never Was
The people of Hasankeyf, Turkey, have long enjoyed the nearby Tigris River, seen here in 2019. Recently, the creation of the Ilisu Dam has submerged their town. Burak…
Silent Spring in Europe calls for a New Social Ecology by Tanja Bogusz
Deserted streets in Rome, empty dance-halls in Berlin, died-out tourist attractions in Barcelona, and a lonely Eiffel-Tower in Paris: Europe is experiencing its first locked-down spring. It marks…
Revisiting Defoe, or: Why History Matters in the Time of Covid-19
CATHERINE TOURANGEAU Why should history matter in times of crisis? The question is worth pondering. Historians and history teachers are not on the front lines, fighting for people’s…