by Sheena Cox In March 2020, an art dealer in New York emailed a Vietnamese art curator named An Nguyen and revoked his participation in an upcoming event. A “high level of anxiety” surrounding COVID-19, and concerns that Asians carried the virus might discourage audience attendance, she explained. When reports of the Coronavirus first hit […]
United States
A Forest of Symbols: Art, Science, and Truth in the Long Nineteenth Century by Andrei Pop (2019)
by Rodrigo Salido Moulinié Can art really say anything? Although it may seem like a childish question, raising it triggers some unsettling thoughts. Much of what we usually think about artists and their work, the role art plays in our worlds, and even the possibility of writing its history relies on the answer to that […]
This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by David J. Silverman (2019)
by Alina Scott “We do ourselves no good by hiding from the truth,” a Wampanoag elder told David Silverman as he prepared This Land is Their Land. In upward of 400 pages, Silverman suggests that, by “we” the elder was referring to those who would prefer to cling to heartwarming narratives of turkey and peace, […]
The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement by Lorena Oropeza (2019)
By Micaela Valadez One of the most challenging projects for historians of the twentieth century is producing biographical accounts of the heroes and heroines of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Historical biographies have been attacked because they muddy our positive view of popular leaders in movements that remain salient in the twenty-first […]
The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman (2018)
by Ashley Garcia The Field of Blood is a timely publication that examines congressional violence in antebellum America. The work reorients our understanding of the road to American disunion and the political conflicts that dominated Congress in the three decades before the Civil War. Freeman has unearthed an overlooked history of congressional brawls, fights, duels, […]
To Chicago and Back by Aleko Konstantinov (1894)
by Mary Neuburger In 1893 Aleko Konstantinov, one of Bulgaria’s most well known literary figures, traveled to the Chicago World’s Fair. Once in Chicago, Aleko—as he is remembered by Bulgarians—observed this now-famous spectacle along with the peculiarities of the “New World” itself. The Chicago fair was a formidable vision of prosperity and progress, by […]
Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide by C.J. Alvarez (2019)
By Alejandra C. Garza The U.S.-Mexico border is a constant subject in today’s news. Debates over immigration and the building of a wall along the border keep the spotlight fixed on the land and water that stretches from California to Texas on the U.S. side and Baja California to Tamaulipas in Mexico. As a native […]
The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus (2019)
by Kameron Dunn Sharon Marcus’s The Drama of Celebrity argues that a celebrity is not merely a creation of the media, but is rather a result of the competing interactions between the media, publics, and the celebrities themselves. Marcus makes the provocative argument that celebrities, as we conceive of them today, are not newly minted […]
Whisper Tapes: Kate Millett in Iran by Negar Mottahedeh (2019)
by Denise Gomez On March 7, 1979, just one day before International Women’s Day, the highly influential American feminist scholar, Kate Millet, appeared in Tehran, in the Iranian Revolution’s afterglow. Invited alongside other prominent feminist scholars and activists to speak at a demonstration organized by Iranian woman activists, Millet was accompanied by her partner and […]
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2008)
by Ben Wright In Eric Remarque’s 1921 novel, The Road Back, a group of veterans (now enrolled as students at a local university in Germany) quietly seethe at the back of a classroom while their professor eulogizes their fallen comrades. The professor’s platitudes cause them to wince, but his romanticism of death makes them boil […]
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