This is the second half of a two-part article. To read the first part, click here. Anthony Pagden is a Distinguished Professor in the History Department at the University of California-Los Angeles. England-born and Oxford-trained, but based on the West Coast of the United States, he is emotionally and intellectually invested in the idea of Europe–that […]
Roundtable Review of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (2023) by William Inboden
From the editors: William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most […]
Lecturing in Kherson: A One-Year Reflection on Maps, Occupations, and Russia’s War against Ukraine
One year ago, on March 18th, 2022, I was lecturing via Zoom on the history of Ukraine and Ukrainian cartography in the city of Kherson. My public talk to a classroom of students, faculty, and administrators was entitled “Ukraine Mapped: Between History and Geopolitics.” My talk was not normal. Kherson is a strategic port city […]
Picturing My Family: Wartime Weddings and a People’s War
From the Editors: “Picturing My Family” is a new series at Not Even Past. As a Public History magazine, we aim to make History more accessible by publishing research features and other articles. But of course, History doesn’t reach us solely through words. It lives on in images, too. A good photograph transmits as much […]
Early Modern and Colonial Histories of Globalization: An Interview with Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, and Rachel Sarah O’Toole (Part II)
Foreword by John Gleb This is the second half of a two-part article. To read the first part, click here. Ivonne del Valle (University of California-Berkeley), Anna More (Universidade de Brasília), and Rachel Sarah O’Toole (University of California-Irvine) are prominent scholars of colonial Latin America. Earlier this year, they sat down with Fernando Gomez Herrero […]
Tracking Kurosawa Through Postwar Japan (and How I Turned a Side Hustle Into a Book)
The New World and Beyond: A Review of New World Nature
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 […]
Five Books to Help Make Sense of the War in Ukraine
On 24 February, 2022, Russia shocked the world by dramatically escalating its longstanding war with Ukraine. Since then, numerous experts—including students, faculty, and alumni of the University of Texas at Austin—have performed a vital public service by commenting directly on the Ukraine crisis, unpacking its complicated origins and exposing its devastating impact. Inspired by their […]
Review of The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World (2020)
Most of us prefer to avoid insects. A bee, a cockroach, or a fat yellowish worm confront us with nature’s “ugliness” and present a disconcerting threat to our modern, comfortable being. Perhaps even less appealing than meeting these weirdly shaped creatures is the thought of reading about them. And yet, despite this instinctive response, Edward […]
Review of The Men Who Lost America: British Command during the Revolutionary War and the Preservation of the Empire (2013)
Several years ago, while visiting Jamestown, Virginia, I had an epiphany; this isn’t American history, it’s English history—these people were English, and the America they strived within was a space more than an entity. Of course, this all changed with the American Revolution. So for obvious reasons, Yorktown, not far from Jamestown, didn’t give this […]