By Paula O’Donnell Windswept litter and flaming logs on asphalt. Backlit figures swaying to handmade percussive instruments and bongos. High school seniors from Colegio Nacional huddled for warmth on the sidewalk, resting foreheads on shoulders for brief shut eye. A neighboring group of teens hoisted Argentine flags that read Movimiento Estudiantil Liberación. They danced and […]
Urban
Underground Santiago: Sweet Waters Grown Salty
By Nathan Stone Preso en su lecho mi rio pasa, pero se acerca su libertad. Sus aguas dulces ya son saladas; ya no eres rio, eres el mar. A prisoner within its banks, my river rolls on, soon to find freedom. Your sweet waters now have grown salty; you’re no river, now, you are […]
In Defense of the Crime Story
By Diego A. Godoy Judicial records usually provide the empirical grist underpinning historical studies of crime, but journalism is the lifeblood of the field. The efforts of reporters, editors, photographers and illustrators have allowed researchers to resurrect bygone crimes, often in forensic detail. In the more recent Latin American past, for instance, the intrepid sleuthing […]
Peeping Through the Bamboo Curtain: Archives in the People’s Republic of China
By Kazushi Minami History is a contested area of politics in any country. Particularly so in China, where the Chinese Communist Party defines the national history. In the 1980s, in a period of reform, China started to open up its archives and archivists generously helped researchers find documents they needed. The Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive […]
Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles: A Public History Project
By Caroline Murray Los Angeles is a city famous for its Hollywood celebrities and traffic, but a new project reveals an often overlooked part of the city’s past and present: its indigenous population, cited as one of the largest among American cities. Mapping Indigenous LA (MILA) brings to life the histories and current dilemmas of […]
Popular Culture in the Classroom
By Nakia Parker Popular culture can be a powerful tool in helping students understand history. Music, film, TV, fiction, and paintings offer effective and creative ways to bring primary source material into the classroom. Last fall, I gave a lecture on Black Power and popular culture in an introductory course on African American History. We […]
Diasporic Charity and Salonica’s Jewish Community after the Fire of 1917
The minutes of a 1922 meeting of the Council of the Jewish Community of Salonica, today’s Thessaloniki in Greece, recorded a cordial but contentious discussion.
Notes from the Field: The Pope in Manila
This week my attempts to carry out archival research in Manila have been interrupted by Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines.
Andrew Cox Marshall: Between Slavery and Freedom in Savannah
By Tania Sammons This essay is reproduced from the book we are featuring this month, Slavery and Freedom in Savannah, edited by Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris. If you would like to know more about the book and especially about the sidebars that feature short essays on interesting figures and events related to the […]
History in Motion: The New Archive (No. 4)
Traditional maps can portray people and places at certain moments, but they do not capture the dynamism of movement and change over time. And historical texts can describe change over time but lack the visual element that makes it possible to see the multiple dimensions of change at once.