Camila Ordorica, Author at Not Even Past

Review of Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra, by Ericka Verba (2025)

Ericka Verba’s book Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra is the riveting culmination of a lifetime of dedicated and passionate research about the world-renowned Chilean artist Violeta Parra. Verba immerses readers into the rowdy Chilean peñas, elite Communist gatherings, smoke-filled Parisian nightclubs, and desolate circus tents to narrate decades of Chilean musical history through Parra’s life. Thanks to Life, a long-anticipatedbook for historians of Chilean music, reveals the tumultuous realities of Chilean women musicians through Violeta’s work and life.

Violeta Parra is considered the “mother of Chilean protest music,” who Verba positions as a multidimensional “everything-ist” skilled in songwriting, poetry, ceramics, and a range of visual arts. All but disregarded in Chile during her lifetime, Verba attributes Parra’s obscurity to gendered, racist and classist reasons. Verba frames such social characteristics around authenticity: Parra continually reinvented herself as “the representative of pure and unchanging traditions in the face of [modernity]” (p. 301). While authenticity is a concept that has been discussed almost ad nauseum in Folklore studies and Ethnomusicology, Verba masterfully revives the notion to demonstrate how Violeta manipulated this authenticity for her professional benefit. Parra deployed authenticity interchangeably as the Indigenous, the popular (of the people), the intuitive, or the ordinary, even as audiences and stakeholders stereotyped and at times denigrated her for the same reasons. Verba underscores the intersecting gendered and classist facets of such claims: Parra’s creative abilities, dress, and even her smell, both constructed her as authentic and marginalized her amongst urban audiences.

Yo no tomo la guitarra por conseguir un aplauso: yo canto la diferencia de lo cierto lo falso…
Source: Library of Congress

What I find most exhilarating about Thanks to Life is that Verba displays the complexity of Violeta for who she was, without attempts to either glorify or demonize her. Parra was notorious for her violent outbursts and brash personality; Verba reminds readers that had Violeta lived today, she would have likely been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Rather than attempting to explain Parra’s choices—her bawdy humor, toxic relationship with Gilbert Favre, or penchant for bashing guitars over others’ heads—she instead interrogates the gendered reactions to such behaviors. Readers come away with a vision of Violeta as determined, scrappy, and utterly nonconformist. [1] [2]

Methodologically, Verba pulls together primary sources from across the Americas and Europe by following the places where Parra travelled throughout her life. Through bringing in resources from unexpected places such as the American Folklife Center and the World Festival of Youth and Students Collection, she positions Parra’s story within broader currents of twentieth century folk movements and the cultural Cold War. While I have to admit that I hoped for oral histories rather than a heavy reliance on secondary sources, Verba selected poignant interpersonal and anecdotal details from the autobiographies of individuals such as Favre and Violeta’s brother, Nicanor, to bring Violeta’s story to life. Verba further incorporates song and poetry lyrics into each chapter to explain Parra’s political positions and supplement biographical information. The translations for such verses are particularly impressive as the poetry is riddled with colloquial phrases and Chilean-specific terminology. Collaborators Nancy Morris and Patricia Vilches did a stunning job translating while retaining meaning.

Thanks to Life is chronologically organized into ten chapters, with patterning reminiscent of the ten-line poet-songs that Parra composed. Chapter 1, “Materials,” explores Violeta’s childhood and adolescence in southern Chile, framed as the years that gave her the “‘materials that ma[d]e up [her] song’” (p. 11). Chapter 2, “Anti-Materials,” and Chapter 3, “Folklorista,” offer significant contributions to Chilean music history scholarship. In “Anti-Materials,” Verba reveals two decades of Parra’s life that current narratives, and Violeta herself, glossed over: her years making ends meet as a young working-class musician in Santiago. Years of gigging in nighttime dives disrupt Parra’s neat narrative of authenticity as a countryside child growing up to play folk music; yet, they explain how Parra gained the resiliency to maneuver within the male-dominated music industry in future years. “Folklorista” demonstrates the impact of her family, and particularly her siblings, on her initial success as a folklorista and her subsequent rise as a forerunner of the folk music revival. Her brother Nicanor was particularly influential in both introducing her to the intellectual and artistic circles of Santiago and inspiring her to begin composing the traditionally masculine poet-songs. Conversely, the breakup of the commercially oriented sister duo Las Hermanas Parra forced Violeta to strike out on her own career, leading her to the folk songs that would initially bring her individual fame.

Chapters 4, 7, and 8 document Parra’s two stints in Europe, first in the 1950s, and a decade later in the 1960s. Once again, Verba weaves Violeta’s personal life, and complex family dynamics, into the broader musical scenes and political landscapes. Of particular importance is the author’s exploration of how Parra rose from performing in working-class dives to exhibiting her artwork at the Louvre: Violeta revised her own narrative to exaggerate her poverty and Indigenous heritage, thereby elevating her authenticity as a folk “everything-ist.” Chapters 5 and 6, sandwiched between Parra’s Europe years, chronicle precisely these years spent back in Chile. Framed around Nicanor calling his sister “volcanic” (p. 121), Verba details the explosion of Violeta’s creative activities as she transitioned from folklorista to a multi-faceted songwriter and artist. The last two chapters, “New Songs” and “Last Songs,” hone in on key components of the final years of Parra’s life: her performances in her childrens’ folk club the Peña de los Parra; the composition of the songs that made her famous, including “Run Run se fue pa’l norte,” “Volver a los diecisiete,” and “Rin del angelito;” the ultimately unsuccessful Carpa de la Reina; and the singer’s deteriorating mental health.

As Verba remarks at the beginning of the book, Thanks to Life is not meant to be read alone, but rather to be accompanied with Parra’s music and images of her artwork. I personally recommend her tapestries (they brought me to tears the first time I saw them); Verba conveniently created a playlist for readers to listen to Parra’s music on her website.

Book cover of Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra, by Ericka Verba (2025)

I could not put the book down, even though I knew it would predictably end with Parra’s suicide. Over the pages, I became deeply invested not only in Violeta, but in her children Ángel and Isabel, her husbands and lovers, and the fate of Parra’s Carpa. While I have been a “Violetamaniac”for almost a decade, I learned new information on every page, especially as Verba connected Parra’s compositions to the context in which they were written. I laughed aloud when Verba highlighted Violeta’s humor through the story of a telegraph sent to God; I shared her anger when her first husband refused to support her artistic career. In short, through this book, I feel that I know Violeta Parra more deeply than I thought imaginable.

Hannah is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside and Visiting Instructor of Music at Occidental College. She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UC Riverside and a BA in Music and Spanish from Messiah University. Sponsored by the Fulbright Hays and Fulbright IIE, Hannah’s current research examines the life and work of Chilean folklorist Margot Loyola and her impact on traditional music performance and education.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History, by William T. Taylor (2024)

Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History is an ambitious project that sets out to present a narrative of human-horse interactions in every corner of the globe from the deep evolutionary past to the twenty-first century. The result is a lucid survey drawing on fresh archaeological research—including some by the author—as well as interdisciplinary insights from oral history, linguistics, and veterinary medicine. The book is a pleasure to read and beautifully presented, with delightful in-text illustrations and 20 full-color plates. Blending erudition and accessibility, Taylor demonstrates the absolute centrality of horses to human cultures, economies, and technologies, as access to horses and expertise in horsemanship repeatedly shifted geopolitical balances on the broadest scale. Though one study cannot exhaust the interpretive potential of this material, Hoof Beats is an indispensable guide to the contours of the human past as they were drawn through contact with horses.

The book is divided into four parts, each referred to as a ‘beat.’ Beat One is dedicated to early connections between horses and people before domestication. Ancestral equids first evolved in North America approximately four million years ago and spread to Eurasia by the Bering land bridge. North American equids did not survive the warm conditions of the early Holocene, so our first evidence for interactions with hominins comes from the eastern hemisphere. According to archaeological remains of slaughtered animals in their grassland habitats, our ancestors were preeminent hunters of equids, including early horses and a separate lineage of donkeys and related animals. Taylor’s own research focuses on the domestication of horses, and he skillfully guides readers through the archaeological debate about when and where this first happened. He explains that research on domestication is not “a search for any particular trait or behavior but instead…a deep dive into the relationship between humans and animals and how it has changed over time.”[1] This relationship is clearly perceived by pathological changes or damage to a horse’s skeleton caused by bridles, mouthpieces, or the direct impact of a rider’s body.

Drawing of horse anatomy with parts signaled by numbers — *A compend of equine anatomy and physiology (1896). Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Beat Two begins with an analysis of donkeys as the first domesticated equids. Taylor shows that evidence for their domestication can be found in early dynastic Egypt, where the “vertebral deformation” of donkey skeletons along with iconography depicting the animals hitched to carts suggests that they were widely used.[2] The cart and later the chariot spread throughout the Near East by donkeys and their hemione relatives. New research shows that this technology was eventually applied to domesticated horses in the early second millennium BCE by the Sintashta culture, along the border of what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. Burials including horses, chariots, and the world’s oldest bridles and bits provide conclusive proof of horse domestication and use in transport. The chapter shows how horse-drawn chariots spread rapidly across Eurasia in just a few centuries while also revolutionizing pastoral life in the steppes, encouraging greater mobility and larger herds. Especially in the Mediterranean world, horse-drawn chariots became the key to political and military power.

In Beat Three, Taylor describes the shift to horseback riding, a practice likely pioneered around 1000 BCE in what is now the Xinjiang Province of China. Evidence for riding in the area comes from whips, saddle pads, and notably “the world’s oldest trousers,” uniquely suitable for sitting astride a horse.[3] Though Taylor considers mounted riding across African and Eurasian societies in this section, the real protagonists are steppe cultures, especially from Inner Asia. People of the steppes drove “technological progress,” developing the frame saddle, stirrups, and curb bits.[4] They were well positioned to dominate the supply of horses, which were always in demand by surrounding civilizations. Taylor’s insights on the crucial role of horses and climate changes in the extraordinary success of steppe empires—from the Xiongnu to the Mongols—serve as much-needed context for the radical impact of these supposedly marginal societies.

Grave Figures of Horses and Camels, Anonymous, ca. 650 – ca. 750
Source: Rijksmuseum

Finally, Beat Four explores the global expansion of horses and horsemanship. Many Eurasian societies developed shipbuilding technologies to transport horses by water, leading to herds in Japan, Iceland, and beyond. Taylor is particularly interested in the “return” of horses to their distant homeland with the advent of European colonization in the Americas.[5] He demonstrates that archaeology can modify historical timelines for the spread of horses and their adoption by Indigenous societies. More importantly, in the Great Plains and elsewhere, he argues that “the rapid emergence of strong relationships between people and horses disrupted the trajectory of European colonialism and helped sustain the sovereignty of Indigenous nations deep into the modern era.”[6] This section concludes with a brief discussion of the fate of horses in the industrializing world—a story of intensified labor and, finally, marginalization.

Book cover of Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History

Taylor is a skilled writer and a superb science educator. Hoof Beats can serve as a kind of primer in archaeological research methods for non-specialists. No region of the world remains untouched by his judicious treatment, making the book an excellent reference text and catalyst for further research. His incorporation of interdisciplinary material is impressive, but it is worth noting that he does not engage with critical animal studies (CAS) or historiographical approaches to animals.[7] This is understandable considering his disciplinary expertise and the goals of his project, but readers could be excused for coming away from his work with the assumption that horses exist for humans. Indeed, while Taylor proposes a relational model for human-horse history early in the book, his narrative actually prioritizes the human use (and, to a lesser degree, care) of horses. It would be worthwhile to flip Taylor’s perspective by taking a non-anthropocentric stance. For example, what can archaeology and veterinary medicine tell us about the quality of life for domesticated horses across time and space, whose skeletal remains seem to tell a constant tale of over-exertion and bodily harm? Taylor concludes his book by gesturing to the lessons for our modern world from the more sustainable, “golden age of horse transport.”[8] But for horses, this was clearly no golden age. Perhaps there are other lessons to be learned from this history.

Hannah McClain is a third-year PhD student in UT Austin’s Department of History. She studies early modern Europe with a regional focus on the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily.

[1] Hoof Beats, 31. Italics in the original.

[2] Hoof Beats, 65.

[3] Hoof Beats, 113.

[4] Hoof Beats, 150.

[5] Hoof Beats, 180.

[6] Hoof Beats, 193.

[7] Readers interested in these alternative approaches can begin with Erica Fudge’s theoretical and methodological reflections in “A Left-Handed Blow: Writing the History of Animals,” in Representing Animals, ed. Nigel Rothfels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 3-13.

[8] Hoof Beats, 219.

This is Democracy – Lebanon Wars

This week, Jeremi and Zachary have a discussion with Dr. Emily Whalen about Lebanon’s complex history and its current conflict.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “A Prophecy”.

Dr. Emily Whalen is a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her first book, The Lebanese Wars, which examines the history of U.S. interventions in the Lebanese Civil War, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2025. She earned her PhD in 2020 from the University of Texas at Austin.

This is Democracy – Banking and Democracy

This week, Jeremi and Zachary have a conversation with Professor Mary Bridges, author of ‘Dollars and Dominion: U.S. Bankers and the Making of a Superpower.’ They explore the significant, yet often overlooked, role of banking institutions, particularly the Federal Reserve, in shaping American democracy and foreign policy.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Reserves”.

The conversation delves into the historical impact of Banker’s Acceptance credit instruments on global trade, the establishment of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, and the dynamics of financial power during and after World War I. They also address the importance of transparency and accountability in maintaining a participatory democracy.

Mary Bridges is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is a historian of the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower, has just been published. Her next research project focuses on infrastructure building as a means of projecting U.S. influence overseas. Mary has also worked as a business reporter and editor.

Review of Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico, by Jaclyn Ann Sumner (2024)

An Indigenous person in a position of power during the Porfiriato, the period from 1876 to 1910 when General Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico, seems almost unimaginable. But in Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Jaclyn Sumner tells the captivating story of Próspero Cahuantzi, who governed Tlaxcala for nearly 26 years—longer than any other governor of the period. What makes Cahuantzi’s tenure unique is not only his Indigenous heritage, but the ways in which he skillfully leveraged power in a political climate steeped in racial prejudice and anti-Indigenous policies. While Porfirio Díaz’s regime was persecuting and oppressing Indigenous populations elsewhere, including pursuing brutal campaigns like the attempted extermination of the Yaqui, Cahuantzi defied the odds by wielding executive power in Tlaxcala.

Indigenous Autocracy is not a biography. However, Sumner skillfully uses Cahuantzi’s life and career to explore the complex political practices that supported Díaz’s authoritarian regime, addressing themes like race, ethnicity, liberalism, nation-building, authoritarianism, and environmental control in late 19th and early 20th-century Mexico. Through a regional focus on Tlaxcala, Sumner challenges the common portrayal of a monolithic and omnipotent Porfirian government. She illustrates how Díaz’s authority was far from uniform across Mexico and that his policies were more flexible and negotiable at the local level.

Portrait of Próspero Cahuantzi — *Próspero Cahuantzi. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Sumner probes the question of how Cahuantzi maintained his power over such an extended period of time, especially given that some of his policies seemed to conflict with Díaz’s modernization plans. Although his military career and loyalty to Díaz initially solidified his position, it was Cahuantzi’s ability to strategically invoke his Indigenous identity—both personally and on behalf of Tlaxcala—that secured his continued tenure. Cahuantzi came to embody the idealized “civilized Indigenous” figure that the Porfirian regime was willing to support: an individual connected to Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past and yet aligned with the government’s goals of progress, order, and stability. In this way, Sumner argues, Cahuantzi’s carefully crafted image of indigeneity was highly selective, reinforcing anti-Indigenous sentiments against those who did not conform to this model of the “civilized” Indigenous leader. This selective indigeneity was not only politically expedient but also profoundly rhetorical; it was tailored to fit the expectations of an assimilationist state rather than reflecting a deep commitment to Indigenous practices or worldviews.

While Sumner presents Cahuantzi as a compelling figure through which to examine Porfirian policies at the local level, there are moments when she may ascribe too much influence to him. A more detailed exploration of Tlaxcala’s local government structures would have strengthened the analysis by illustrating how other officials or advisors within Cahuantzi’s administration may have influenced governance. Additionally, since indigeneity is a core theme of the book, an expanded investigation into the worldview of Tlaxcala’s Indigenous groups—including the Nahuas and Otomíes—and their usos y costumbres (customs and traditions) would have enriched our understanding of how Cahuantzi’s identity intersected with local Indigenous cultures. Sumner suggests that Cahuantzi’s knowledge of local relationships, resources, and traditions allowed him to implement policies that maintained social stability and content. But a deeper analysis of his Indigenous heritage could have illuminated how it informed his political decisions. Such an absence suggests that Cahuantzi’s indigeneity functioned more as a symbolic or rhetorical construct to advance his career, rather than a driving force behind his governance.

*Cabinet meeting of Porfirio Díaz. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Sumner argues as well that Díaz tolerated Cahuantzi’s leadership in Tlaxcala partly because the state’s modest size and economy posed little threat to the Porfirian modernization project. However, she later notes that in 1910, “Tlaxcala’s contribution was among the most comprehensive, even as compared to larger states” (p. 130). This increase in revenue, attributed in part to Cahuantzi’s efforts, hints at latent economic potential within Tlaxcala that perhaps went underestimated by Díaz’s central administration. Sumner leaves us to consider why Díaz, despite the era’s prevailing Social Darwinist and positivist ideologies, allowed a high-profile Indigenous governor like Cahuantzi to remain in power. This question deepens our understanding of the regime’s racial and social policies, revealing complexities often overlooked.

Book cover for Indigenous Autocracy: Power, Race, and Resources in Porfirian Tlaxcala, Mexico

I cannot emphasize enough what a pleasure it was to read Jaclyn Sumner first monograph. This work is both meticulously researched and artfully written, offering a narrative that is both intellectually rich and eminently accessible. Its thoughtful organization and clear language make it immensely rewarding for scholars but also accessible to readers beyond the academic sphere. Overall, it succeeds in its aims and makes a substantial contribution to the historiography of Mexico, Tlaxcala, and the Porfiriato, as well as scholarship on indigeneity, race, and authoritarianism in Latin America. It sheds valuable light on the complexities of Indigenous identity and political power within Mexico’s modernization project.

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of Indigenous peoples in the Northwest of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, with a particular emphasis on the Yaqui people. Her current projects examine Yaqui militias and their diaspora during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Bridging the Archival Divide. Lessons from ‘Archiving Activism Freedom School’

On Saturday, September 21, 2024, I had the privilege of joining a diverse group from Austin’s activist community for a workshop, Archiving Activism Freedom School, organized by Dr. Ashanté Reese and Dr. Ashley Farmer–both of them Associate Professors of African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) at the University of Texas at Austin. Funded by the National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Campus Contexutation Intiative, and GRIDS, the workshop aimed to make community archiving practices and techniques accessible with the wider goal of documenting activism. The purpose of the Archiving Activism: Freedom School was to “teach student activist, organizers, and community organizations how to archive their community work and maintain digital documentation of their legacies”.

Oriented towards minority student activism and focused on the diverse racial geographies of Austin, the Archiving Activism Freedom School was “organized in the spirit and tradition of historical freedom schools”. As the organizers explain, Freedom schools “are temporary, alterative, and free schools aimed to help organize communities for social, political, and economic equality”. They have their origins in 18^th and 19^th century secret schools, “where enslaved people learned to read, write, and become politically engaged”. Such institutions became key tools for labor movement and civil rights struggles through the 20^th century.

Historically, the purpose of freedom schools has been to empower communities by teaching their history, critically examining their current circumstances, and fostering education for social and political transformation. These goals were thoughtfully integrated into the Archiving Activism Freedom School.

Picture by Michael T. Davis at the Archiving Activism Freedom School — *Photo Credit: Michael T. Davis Photography*

The first session of the agenda began with two talks by Texas-community members that focused on the question of ‘Why archives matter for your activism’. Jonathan Cortez, (Assistant Professor at the History Department of UT Austin) gave a talk on their experience with the Vicente Carranza Archive which was collected by a Chicano radio host from Corpus Christi. Cortez’s experience as a researcher brought them together with Vicente Carranza, resulting in the development of the Vicente Carranza Papers, a Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) Special Collections now available for consultation at TARO (Texas Archival Resources Online). Cortez’s talk highlighted the importance of community history and creative thinking for archival practice as a means to highlight the activism of Hispanic communities in South Texas.

In the second presentation, Stephanie Lang, writer, organizer, community curator, and founder of RECLAIM, an organization that discovers, recovers, and showcases narratives and histories of Black people through the diaspora, shared her experience with the changing racial landscape of Austin. A seventh-generation African American woman from Austin, she talked about the importance of oral history for documenting the Black history of Austin. Lang emphasized that preservation is a way to maintain the memory and presence of the people of East Austin, one of the city’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city. Archiving, Lang stressed, offers proof that black and brown communities of Austin have pushed back.

In a subsequent session focused on the question of “Who deserves to hold your archives?”, participants heard from Carol Mead (Head of Archives and Manuscripts at The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History), Jacqueline Smith-Francis (Archivist and Curator of Black and African American stories at the Austin History Center), and Rachel Winston (Austin-Based activist, curator, and archivist, currently holding the inaugural Black Diaspora Archivist position at LLILAS Benson, Latin American Studies and Collections).

A long-time archivist at the largest archive within the University of Texas system Mead’s presentation highlighted the ethics of archiving. In doing so, she stressed questions of access and use to keep in mind while creating and engaging with archives. Smith-Francis emphasized that archival work is deeply connected to land, sovereignty, and the silences contained within archives. Drawing on her 25 years as an archivist at the Austin Public Library, she talked about how community archive programs in Austin have contributed to the decolonization of archives. This shift means that archival initiatives now prioritize diverse subjects, stories, and collections—largely thanks to efforts like her own. Finally, Rachel Winston’s presentation offered valuable insights into the decision-making process behind where to place collections and why. She emphasized the importance of carefully selecting who you engage with when creating archives and shared key strategies for building meaningful relationships with archival institutions.

The second half of the workshop was focused on creating an archival plan. First, archivist Genevia Chamblee-Smith, Hidden Collections Curator at the Texas State University Libraries, walked participants through the step-by-step process needed to create an archive. She outlined six key steps: 1) identify, 2) evaluate, 3) describe, 4) arrange, 5) preserve, and 6) name. In the spirit of sharing knowledge, I will briefly outline the main points of these key steps.

Identify: Take inventory of the materials. What is available? What is important to keep, and what can be discarded? Where are the materials located?
Evaluate: Assess the types of materials you have. Which items are the most sensitive or vulnerable? Do you need professional assistance to process or preserve them?
Describe: Each item intended for preservation must be described in detail, answering key questions: What is it? Why is it significant? Who created it? Where did it come from?
Arrange: Organize materials by subject or type. Create an inventory for easy reference, and store documents in acid-free boxes or folders. Ensure the arrangement allows others to access the materials easily.
Preservation: The workshop emphasized digital preservation techniques. Staying current with technology is essential to prevent materials from becoming obsolete. Key strategies include scanning, converting to digital files, storing data across multiple external drives, and regularly backing up materials.
Name: The final step is consistent file naming. Use the File Naming Convention (FNC) framework to ensure files are easy to identify and relate to others. File names should include relevant metadata, avoid spaces and special characters, follow naming conventions, and be descriptive.

Picture taken by author at the Archiving Activism Freedom School — *Each participant received an acid-free archive box containing cotton gloves, a pencil, a flash drive, and an acid-free folder. Image taken by the author.*

With all this information at hand, the Freedom School ended with a digitization workshop where participants were able to scan and organize their materials for digitization, aiming at social movements preservation.

The workshop included concrete items designed to help with archiving work. Participants received an acid-free archive box containing cotton gloves, a pencil, a flash drive, and an acid-free folder. We also received a booklet that not only outlined the day’s agenda but also provided space to brainstorm and map out the six key steps for organizing our archiving projects.

The Archiving Activism Freedom School was an inspiring initiative, designed to introduce non-trained archivists and community participants to the process of creating archives. I spoke with several attendees focused on activism. They were genuinely excited to be there and grateful for the opportunity to learn more about how to archive community’s materials in a professional, intentional way.

More importantly, this workshop serves as a much-needed example of how to bridge the gap between archivists, academics, and activists. While the concept of community archives is gaining momentum, the scholarship in this field is still emerging. This workshop offered invaluable insights into the priorities, challenges, and opportunities that community archives present, making it an incredible learning experience for all involved.

Camila Ordorica is a doctoral candidate in Latin American History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies the history of the General Archive of Mexico during the long nineteenth century (1790-1910). Her research dialogues with archival, cultural, social, and material history, and explores how archives are written into history and their role within it. Camila’s passion for archival studies is rooted in her training as an archivist. She has worked at the Acervos Históricos de la Universidad Iberoamericana and the archives of Sine-Comunarr. She has also collaborated with UNAM’s ENES-Morelia, the ’17, Institute of Critical Studies’ and the International Federation of Public History in archival studies, practice, and digital humanities.

Notes from the Field: Crnojević’s Shelves. Exploratory research in the archives of Montenegro

As people in the past lived out their lives, did they realize the ways in which they would help create the archive of the future? Did the owner of a particular stack of newspapers deliberately label it “Borba Zagreb 1949” to preserve a record of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’s official gazette from that year, or was the note atop the pile simply an act of routine organization? How does an archive—filled with countless documents chronicling the lives of so many—capture the beauty and complexity of the human experience? These questions swirled in my mind as I explored the halls of the Đurđe Crnojević National Library of Montenegro, or the Nacionalna biblioteka Crne Gore, “Đurđe Crnojević,” this past summer, an experience I later reflected upon in Notes from the Field: Crnojević’s Shelves.

In a short time, the library’s massive collection and meticulously cataloged documents led me to experience firsthand the reason why an archive can become such a cherished part of a people’s cultural identity. At the Đurđe Crnojević National Library, it was the always friendly, knowledgeable, and extraordinarily diligent curators of the collections who formed the heart of the historization process, shaping the archive as a reflection of collective lived experience. My time in Montenegro also taught me the significance an archive plays preserving and defending a people’s history—serving as a fortress wall, safeguarding it against forces that would see their history either destroyed or delegitimized.

The bloody history of archives in former Yugoslavia

A little over 30 years ago, in a territory once unified as the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia, a devastating wave of violence swept across the region. Nationalist politicians and warmongers ignited a series of wars fueled by ethnic and religious divisions, ultimately leading to the country’s destruction. During these Yugoslav Wars of Succession, nationalist state-building projects sought to create ethnically “pure” nation states, resulting in widespread violence, ethnic cleansing, and the delegitimization of history. This is on clear display in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the three-and-a-half-year long siege of the country’s capital, Sarajevo, Serbian-backed forces relentlessly terrorized the civilian population, attacking the city with artillery and sniper fire. Their goal was to force the coalition of Bosnian Muslim and Croat forces to surrender the city.

This image was taken during the war in 1992 in Sarajevo in the partially destroyed National Library. The cello player is local musician Vedran Smailović, who often came to play for free at different funerals during the siege despite the fact that funerals were often targetted by Serb forces. (Mikhail Evstafiev) — *This image was taken during the war in 1992 in Sarajevo in the partially destroyed National Library. The cellist is local musician Vedran Smailović. (Mikhail Evstafiev). Source: Wikimedia Commons*

On the night of September 25, 1992, Bosnian Serb guns deliberately fired incendiary shells upon the National Library of Bosnia, affectionately known as the Vijećnica, with the intent to destroy a rich archive of the Bosnian peoples. A former city hall built in the time of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Moorish-style building housed over 1,500,000 volumes and 150,000 old manuscripts, all of which were devoured by the flames. Naza Tanović-Miller, a university professor who wrote about her experiences during the siege, described the scene of horror as the cultural symbol of her people was destroyed, “Our treasure was burning. The Bosnian past was burning… The shelling never stopped for three days. Burned pages and pieces of paper were flying in the front and back of our house… I collected a few ashes and held them gently in my hand. All of Sarajevo cried.”

Coming to Montenegro

Thirty-two years later, at the start of summer 2024, I found myself preparing to explore a key regional archive for the first time in my academic career. While I am no stranger to the Balkans—I have lived and studied in the territory of former Yugoslavia several times before—this was my first visit to Montenegro. When in the Balkans, however, the memory of the wars are never far from my mind, especially the story of the Vijećnica and its brutal destruction.

Image of Montenegro landscape — *Image taken by the author.*

My journey into the Montenegrin archives emerged from a research project I had been developing in the spring of 2024. The project’s central question examines how Yugoslav perception of gender—amongst both women and men—changed after Tito’s Partisans’ victory in World War II. Specifically, I am investigating how the socialist revolution changed wider views of gender and gender roles in the newly formed socialist Yugoslavia. In what ways did the socialist revolution inspire hope and progressive change for women, even if those changes were eventually hindered by patriarchal paternalism?

Picture of author's notes and a coffee. — *Image taken by the author.*

Picture of author's material and notes in the archive's reading room — *Image taken by the author.*

My research led me to Ana Antić’s fascinating article entitled “The New Socialist Citizen and ‘Forgetting’ Authoritarianism”, which analyzed how new schools of psychiatric thought and practice in socialist Yugoslavia sought to apply the ideals of the revolution by expanding access to mental health services. Antić’s work, in turn, led me to the writings of various Yugoslav psychologists who worked with Partisan veterans afflicted with what they coined, “Partisan neurosis”—a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that afflicted soldiers after the war. I stumbled upon a fascinating discussion about these post-war psychologists, who implemented new psychoanalytical techniques designed to bring about a new Yugoslav socialism, including its goal of decolonization and solidarity within the Non-Aligned Movement solidarity.

However, there was a crucial gap in this literature. I discovered that no one seemed to analyze the complex dynamics of gender in this post-war, post-revolutionary socialist period. I felt excited realizing that my project could fit in the discussion by bringing a gendered analysis to the same discussions of this time period between 1945 and 1960. But in order to fill this gap and conduct a meaningful gender analysis, I needed firsthand access to the original sources and writings of these Yugoslav doctors and socialist theorists.

Exploring the Archive

View of The Nacionalna biblioteka Crne Gore, “Đurđe Crnojević”. Image owned by author. — *The Nacionalna biblioteka Crne Gore, “Đurđe Crnojević”. Image taken by the author.*

Spending time in Montenegro, you quickly become aware of the long struggle of its people to preserve their political and cultural independence. In 2006, Montenegro rallied its domestic and diasporic population to vote in a referendum for independence from the state union of Serbia and Montenegro, which had succeeded Yugoslavia. With a narrow 55.5% majority, they won their independence. However, recent development—particularly in Cetinje, home to both the National Library and Archives of Montenegro—have recently renewed calls to action to defend their sovereignty and cultural identity. These calls to action stem from concerns over potential absorption into a ‘Greater Serbian’ sphere of influence, highlighting the ongoing tension between national self-determination and regional political dynamics.

Image of index cards at archive. — *Image taken by the author.*

Between 2020 to 2022, protests erupted across Montenegro in response to the government announcing changes to citizenship, which the opposition claimed would enable the creeping ‘Serbianization’ of the country. Protests were refueled in August 2021 over what Dr. Šušanj described as the subtle colonization of Montenegro by the Serbian Orthodox Church, one that intended to eliminate the existence of a separate Montenegrin ethnic and religious identity. Protesters resisted the enthronement of the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Joanikije Mićović by setting up boulder and tire barricades in and around Cetinje in an attempt to block the ceremony from taking place. Youth leaders like Peđa Vušurović argued that by allowing the Serbian Orthodox Church to strengthen its grip around cherished Montenegrin historical sights—such as St. Peter’s chair in the Cetinje Monastery, a symbol of Montenegrin spiritual, state, and national freedom—risked subsuming Montenegrin identity and history within a larger sphere of Serbian world.

Images of protesters clashing with police, strangled by clouds of tear gas as their tire barricades burned behind them, taught me a great deal about the people of Montenegro. This rang especially true in my mind as the scars from the 1990s remain ever present, and the scourge of divisive nationalism still runs rampant through the other Ex-Yugoslav states. I will never forget the feeling in the pit of my stomach in June 2021 when I saw a banner celebrating convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, the “Butcher of Bosnia”, as a Serbian hero draped over the Novi Sad football stadium.

Poster celebrating local heroes. — *Image taken by the author.*

Even today, Montenegro celebrates its anti-fascist past. In contrast to other former Yugoslav states, like Croatia, which have explicitly worked to denounce and destroy their connections to Yugoslavia and it’s anti-fascist monuments, history, and in some cases cemeteries, the opposite is true in Cetinje. In 2024, the country commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Cetinje from fascist occupation. Near the main square, a large banner honored female Partisan fighters from the 1st Battalion of the 4th Proletarian Brigade, and the famous Orden Grada Heroja, or the Order of the People’s Hero. This prestigious Yugoslav military decoration recognized acts of bravery during both peace and wartime, designating recipients as “people’s heroes” of Yugoslavia. Throughout my time in Montenegro, I encountered numerous Yugoslav plaques celebrating local heroes in every city and neighborhood, and statues honoring the anti-fascist resistance movement and its icons were consistently cared for and preserved. Some, as in the case of famous martyr Ljubo Čupić in the city of Nikšić, still had fresh flowers woven into the statue.

Moving forward

By the end of my time in Cetinje, I realized that my original research goals had not been fully met. I had expected to find a more overt discussion of socialist ideals with these new Yugoslav psychologists. In reality, the picture that emerged was slightly different. However, thanks to the many lessons taught to me by Crnojević’s library and the resilient people of Montenegro, I now have a new direction with which to progress my project on gender in the post-war socialist space. With the addition of various literature sources, I plan to use what I found in the archives to further explore my questions. I also hope to return to Montenegro many more times in the years to come.

David Castillo is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on the former communist Yugoslavia and its successor states. His research explores the links between inter-communal violence, toxic masculinity, gender dynamics, propaganda, and mass manipulation. With academic foundations from the University of Texas at El Paso and Indiana University, David combines cultural history with international politics. Drawing from his experience in the region, he aims to compare post-Yugoslav masculinity shaped by the 1990s wars with Chicano/a/e ‘Machismo’ in Mexican-American borderlands, investigating how violence becomes integral to both identities.

A visceral turn: Dr. Zeb Tortorici and queer alterities to the archives

In honor of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the 2022 Lozano Long Conference focuses on archives with Latin American perspectives in order to better visualize the ethical and political implications of archival practices globally. The conference was held in February 2022 and the videos of all the presentation will be available soon. Thinking archivally in a time of COVID-19 has also given us an unexpected opportunity to re-imagine the international academic conference. This Not Even Past publication joins those by other graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. The series as a whole is designed to engage with the work of individual speakers as well as to present valuable resources that will supplement the conference’s recorded presentations. This new conference model, which will make online resources freely and permanently available, seeks to reach audiences beyond conference attendees in the hopes of decolonizing and democratizing access to the production of knowledge. The conference recordings and connected articles can be found here.

En el marco del homenaje al centenario de la Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, la Conferencia Lozano Long 2022 propició un espacio de reflexión sobre archivos latinoamericanos desde un pensamiento latinoamericano con el propósito de entender y conocer las contribuciones de la región a las prácticas archivísticas globales, así como las responsabilidades éticas y políticas que esto implica. Pensar en términos de archivística en tiempos de COVID-19 también nos brindó la imprevista oportunidad de re-imaginar la forma en la que se llevan a cabo conferencias académicas internacionales. Como parte de esta propuesta, esta publicación de Not Even Past se junta a las otras de la serie escritas por estudiantes de posgrado en la Universidad de Texas en Austin. En ellas los estudiantes resaltan el trabajo de las y los panelistas invitados a la conferencia con el objetivo de socializar el material y así descolonizar y democratizar el acceso a la producción de conocimiento. La conferencia tuvo lugar en febrero de 2022 pero todas las presentaciones, así como las grabaciones de los paneles están archivados en YouTube de forma permanente y pronto estarán disponibles las traducciones al inglés y español respectivamente. Las grabaciones de la conferencia y los artículos relacionados se pueden encontrar aquí.

…Soy ese amor que negarás para salvar tu dignidad
Soy lo prohibido…
(Roberto Cantoral, 1970)

The first time I engaged with the work of Dr. Zeb Tortorici was in 2019, at the end of a Texas fall when the idea of a worldwide emergency as COVID-19 seemed improbable, if not impossible. At the time, I was meeting with my future PhD advisor, Dr. Laura Gutierrez, at UT Austin, to explore research into queer disgust, the performance of pleasure, excess, and queer rejection to LGBTT+ hegemony in México. Dr. Gutierrez told me about a book she considered helpful for my research. The book was Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain (2018). This book would become my introduction to the work of Dr. Tortorici, his affective approach to archived documentation, and the methodological shift to queering archives in the search for possibilities for censured queer alterity.

Once I had the book in my hands, I examined it with care and attention. A medium-sized book, not too heavy, yet not insubstantial. A black and red cover showcased an image of what looked to be a winged devil speaking to various demonic creatures. Navigating the book’s pages was as fascinating as exploring the aesthetic composition of its exterior. Dr. Tortorici introduces the book by re-telling an event from my hometown, Monterrey, in 1656. Lorenzo Vidales, a local thirteen-year-old, was found engaging in bestiality with a goat, an act the civilian and religious courts punished by having Lorenzo whipped and expelled from the city of Monterrey. The death penalty served as a warning and promise for him if he ever thought of returning to the city. Even when the event belongs to the municipal archives of Monterrey and, therefore, to our national and regional historical memory, it is, in no way, part of the collective knowledge of those of us who grew up at La Sultana del Norte, as Monterrey is known. It was too repulsive, too nefarious; and simply too deviant to have a place in the official narrative of the city, a space constructed around industrial myths where the will and determination of the industrial catholic bourgeoise made the desert fertile.

*State Archive of Nuevo León. Images taken by the author.*

Having the opportunity to speak to Dr. Tortorici in person shortly after encountering his work doubled my excitement and curiosity about his research into excess and memory. The start of that conversation, which I hope to continue over the years, was marked by what I felt to be a meeting of kindred spirits of a sort who haunt archived excess and academic curiosity. These spirits surely welcome gracious archival accidents. So are the questions and conceptual possibilities that archival accidents allow. What I found most valuable, however, as I venture into my own research on the possibilities of excess in performance art in Monterrey, were the questions of embodied viscerality and excess, and its trans-temporal archival presence.

Dr. Tortorici’s research has a particular connection to my own work on the visceral and excess and to my analysis of queer possibilities in the face of hegemonic normalcy. For context, two special issues of A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (to which Dr. Tortorici contributed) give theoretical weight to embodied and archival vicerality by defining it as “a phenomenological index for the logics of desire, consumption, disgust, health, disease, belonging, and displacement that are implicit in colonial and postcolonial relations.”^[1] Tortorici’s contribution adopts a microhistorical lens to show how vicerality can structure and baffle archival impulses. Incidents of necrophilia, fellatio, masturbation, and erotic religious visions from colonial Mexican archives reveal the layered and complex “gut feelings” of historical actors – including the archivists and historians who registered these events.^[2] In short, although Dr. Tortorici’s work covers an earlier period than my scholarly interests, I was eager to engage in dialogue with him—especially when it comes time to sort out affective approaches that queer the archives and confront the excessive elements that have been intentionally overlooked.

Let me zoom out briefly from my first reading of Sins Against Nature and my exciting first conversation with Dr. Tortorici about our shared research interests, to offer a brief overview of his research trajectory. From there, we can begin to explore how his understanding and work with the archives of “No” are opening up archival possibilities for radical alterities to institutional respectability. By archives of “No”, I refer to that which is too excessive to be archived, or even remembered by institutions; therefore rejected on a “anti” archive category, a “No” category .

Manuscript text of a sodomy trial in Monterrey — *Archivo Historico Monterrey / Causas Criminales Vol 10 B Exp 958 / 1704 / Contra Lorenzo Aspitia por haber cometido el pecado Nefando.*

Dr. Tortorici is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literature at New York University. His research interests center around queer colonial history and archives in Latin America, with particular attention to pornography, dissident sexualities, pleasure, desire, and censorship. In addition to several prestigious fellowships and visiting professorships, Dr. Tortorici also has a remarkable publication record. Sins Against Nature won the John Boswell Award from the Committee on LGBT History and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize. Dr. Tortorici’s work recognizes the value of intellectual community building for advancing valuable scholarly projects. This includes his co-editing different volumes on Ethno-Pornography, Centering Animals in History, Trans*historicities, and Medical reproductive knowledge in 18^th-century Latin America.

Dr. Tortorici’s work in many ways represents a navigation of the archives of the “No.” As a historian of the “No”, his focus and methodology have centered on looking for different moments of non-history, non-citizens, and undesirable non-humans.^[3] He hopes to guide academic curiosity toward that which has been historically silenced and those who have been double censured by the creators and the user-researchers of archives. A methodological turn toward the “No” should not be understood within the limits of orthodox archival order and logic but rather as queer interruptions to academic normalcy. His approach to queering the archives is not reserved solely for diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. The implications of his questions around archival materials productively open broader alterities to the colonial order, which, in turn, make the “nefarious” episodes of the “no” histories he reconstructs transcendental.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, “pleasure,” despite the positive affect it connotes, nevertheless overlaps with the realm of the “No.” I’m fascinated by Dr. Tortorici’s work on pleasure for presenting a platform to speak of something that has been purposefully ignored, surveilled, and exoticized, and as a response to imposed contemporary archival respectability. Dr. Tortorici’s research opens a space for queer pleasure, embodied desires, and the erotic. His efforts are even more admirable precisely because they must work against the structural limits imposed by institutions holding archival traces of these pleasurable moments.

Book cover Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America

The good news is that visceral rejections of queer pleasure hold the key that can free over-silenced stories. Queer embodied conversations with archived pasts must be understood primarily as that: conversations. Dr. Tortorici leads us towards these conversations, which must necessarily turn towards careful coded dialogues that those queering archival research can affectively understand. These embodied visceral conversations inherently involve provocations, consumptions, and reactions. In this sense, Dr. Tortorici reveals how queering colonial archives means showing how archives hold and censure stories of consumption that have provoked disgust within those who created the archive. These visceral tensions open a “beyond time” affective encounter with those who study and translate queer codes of the archive and engage in visceral dialogues with the present, past, and future. Dr. Tortorici is careful to point out the need for accurate translations of queer viscerality. The provocation censured, persecuted, and archived during the colonial period does not have the same affective meaning for contemporary audiences. These conversations, therefore, are very much in the translation.

I keep returning to a term Dr. Tortorici brought into our dialogue: imagination. In order to affectively navigate and queer the archives there is a need for radical imagination. Radical imaginaries permit deeper explorations of the “what if?” These historical possibilities, in turn, contribute to queer contemporary life beyond utopia. In this sense, Dr. Tortorici’s radical imaginaries regarding the archive contribute to a greater genealogy of academic shifts toward radical archival work. I am thinking here of Black feminist scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Tina Campt, and Riley Snorton, who have opened up radical affective possibilities for queer archives of color.

Dr. Tortorici was featured in the panel “Histories of Collecting and Collecting Stories” for the 2022 Lozano Long Conference, titled “Archiving Objects of Knowledge with Latin American Perspectives.” It is my sincere hope that this introduction may help situate his work as it continues to expand discussions of radical queer archival alterities.

Cuir norteño from Monterrey (México), member of the House of Majesty. PhD student at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. Currently, he’s a Student Resident at CIESAS Noreste (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social). He is interested in the possibilities for cuir radical futurity-building via excess, cuir rejection, and alternatives to hegemonic LGBTT+ respectability. He is the father of Carmela, a calico cat.

[1] Sharon P. Holland, Marcia Ochoa, Kyla Wazana Tompkins; On the Visceral. GLQ 1 October 2014; 20 (4): 391–406. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2721339

[2] Zeb Tortorici; Visceral Archives of the Body: Consuming the Dead, Digesting the Divine. GLQ 1 October 2014; 20 (4): 407–437. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2721375

^[3] For the history of the “no,” I am referring here to the work of “unthinkable” histories like those examined by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.

Bibliography

Collections, F. L. (2017). Fales Video Archive . Obtenido de Sex in the Archives: Seeking Sex, Procuring Porn: https://vimeopro.com/nyutv/fales-library/video/208568051

Tortorici, Z. (2014). Visceral Archives of the Body: Consuming the Dead, Digesting the Divine. GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 20(4), 407-437.

Tortorici, Z. (2018). Sins Against Nature: Sex & Archives in Colonial News Spain. Duke University Press.

University, N. Y. (s.f.). Zeb Tortorici. Obtenido de https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/zeb-joseph-tortorici.html

This is Democracy – Hubert Humphrey & Civil Rights

This week, Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Samuel G. Freedman to talk about the often overlooked contributions of Hubert Humphrey to American history and civil rights.

The discussion traces Humphrey’s rise from a small-town boy in South Dakota to a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement and U.S. politics. Despite not achieving the presidency, Humphrey’s impact as Mayor of Minneapolis, U.S. Senator, and Vice President is profound, particularly his efforts on civil rights, African American and Jewish relations.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “The Old Days.”

Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning author, columnist, and professor. A former columnist for The New York Times and a professor at Columbia University, he is the author of 10 acclaimed books, including the newly-released Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. Jon Meacham has hailed the book as “a compelling and important account of Humphrey’s critical role in the freedom struggles of the mid-20th century.”

Freedman’s previous books are Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School (1990); Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church (1993); The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond (1996); Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (2000); Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life (2005); and Letters To A Young Journalist (2006); and Breaking The Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Game and Changed the Course of Civil Rights (2013).

With his colleague Kerry Donahue, Freedman co-produced a radio documentary and authored a companion book, both entitled Dying Words: The AIDS Reporting of Jeff Schmalz and How it Transformed The New York Times. The documentary and book were released in conjunction with World AIDS Day on December 1, 2015, and since then the documentary has been broadcast on more than 500 NPR member stations. In 2020, Freedman wrote Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: The Journey From Stage to Screen, the companion book to the film adaptation of August Wilson’s classic play.

Small Victories was a finalist for the 1990 National Book Award and The Inheritance was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. Upon This Rock won the 1993 Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Four of Freedman’s books have been listed among The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year.

Jew vs. Jew won the National Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2001 and made the Publishers Weekly Religion Best-Sellers list. As a result of the book, Freedman was named one of the “Forward Fifty” most important American Jews in the year 2000 by the weekly Jewish newspaper The Forward.

Freedman was a staff reporter for The New York Times from 1981 through 1987. From 2004 through 2008, he wrote the paper’s “On Education” column, winning first prize in the Education Writers Association’s annual competition in 2005. From 2006 through 2016, Freedman wrote the “On Religion” column, receiving the Goldziher Prize for Journalists in 2017 for a series of columns about Muslim-Americans that had been published over the preceding six years.

Freedman has contributed to numerous other publications and websites, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Daily Beast, New York, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, Salon, Slate, Chicago Sun-Times, Tablet, The Forward, Ha’aretz, The Undefeated, The Root, and BeliefNet.

A tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman was named the nation’s outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2012, he received Columbia University’s coveted Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Freedman’s class in book-writing has developed more than 110 authors, editors, and agents, and it has been featured in Publishers Weekly and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a board member of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Awards and member of the Journalism Advisory Council of Religion News Service and the faculty advisory board of the Center for Journalism Ethics. He has spoken at the Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and UCLA, among other venues, and has appeared on National Public Radio, CNN, and the PBS News Hour.

Freedman holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which he received in May 1977. He lives in New York with his wife, Christia Chana Blomquist.

This is Democracy – Presidential Debates

This week, Jeremy and Zachary sit down with Paul Stekler to explore whether debates influence election outcomes, referencing major debates from past elections, and look closely at the recent debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Everyone is Laughing”.

Paul Stekler is a nationally recognized documentary filmmaker whose critically praised and award-winning work includes George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire; Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style; Vote for Me: Politics in America, a four-hour PBS special about grassroots electoral politics; two segments of the Eyes on the Prize II series on the history of civil rights; Last Stand at Little Big Horn (broadcast as part of PBS’s series The American Experience); Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics (broadcast on PBS’s P.O.V. series); Getting Back to Abnormal (which aired on P.O.V. in 2014); and 2016’s Postcards from the Great Divide, a web series about politics for The Washington Post and PBS Digital. Overall, his films have won two George Foster Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards, three national Emmy Awards, and a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

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