The past is never dead. It's not even past
Using the goldfields in Kedougou in southeastern Senegal, historian and anthropologist Robyn D’Avignon, in Ritual Geology, explores the instrumentality of African indigenous knowledge systems in developing modern mining economies in French West Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. D’Avignon defines ritual geology as a set of practices, prohibitions, and cosmological engagements with the […]
In her talk “Cosmology of Early Buddhism – A Mobile Hierarchy,” Dr. Xinru Liu discussed her book Early Buddhist Society: The World of Gautama Buddha (SUNY Press, 2022; and Permanent Black/Ashoka University, 2022), a richly scholarly yet accessible and imaginative account of society in the time of the Buddha. What might daily life have been like in India in […]
When I visited Rosy Galván Yamanaka’s home in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, she had a bowl of Mexican-style udon prepared for me. I sat down in her dining room and listened as she told me stories of her grandfather, José Ángel Yamanaka, a Japanese migrant who arrived in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. […]
This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Ruth Simmons to discuss her experiences and attitudes toward learning in the context of her new book, “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey.” Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “If The Leaves Could Speak.” Dr. Ruth Simmons is the former president of Smith College, Brown […]
This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. William Jones to discuss the history of labor unions and the current ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers union. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled “From The UAW Picket Line.” William Jones is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, where […]
Note: This article was written and published before Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. “500 tanks!” exclaimed Henry Kissinger. The national security advisor-cum-secretary of state did not want to believe what he was hearing from the Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz as he recounted the losses sustained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) […]
History education has been under attack recently. Or, more specifically, efforts to accurately teach the painful, brutal history of slavery are under attack. Teaching the hard history of slavery has long been a problem in American classrooms. Recently, the battle over state curriculum standards has intensified as some seek to revive a version of history […]
This month, exactly 61 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. visited UT to speak out against racism and segregation. We will interview former UT students who were here back then, when they worked for The Daily Texan, to discuss Dr. King’s visit and that historical moment in the struggle for integration, on campus, in businesses […]
Introduction From the editors: From the Syllabus is a new series from Not Even Past designed to spotlight thought-provoking essays, texts, and other teaching resources that generate great classroom discussions. Each installment features an introduction by a leading educator explaining on what we can learn from each featured resource. From the Syllabus will serve as […]
It’s a three-hour, ultra-big-screen, deeply-researched box office mega-hit about… J. Robert Oppenheimer, project manager. Leslie Groves, the manager’s manager. Kitty Oppenheimer, the manager’s kids’ manager. Lewis Strauss, the wanna-be manager. Harry Truman, the buck-stops-here manager. James Byrnes, President Truman’s manager. The scientists of the Manhattan Project were thoroughly unmanageable. The bomb? It was everybody’s fault, […]