The Strangest Dream – Reykjavik 1986
College freshmen have no personal knowledge of the Cold War. Born after the Berlin Wall’s fall and the Soviet Union’s collapse, the threat of nuclear Armageddon seems far removed from their experiences, a relic of a bygone age. Yet, today, more countries than ever hold weapons whose scale of destruction can dwarf that of every bomb used in World War II.
Lend-Lease
NEP Author Spotlight – Atar David
The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a hugely talented group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work […]
River Depths, Bordered Lands, and Circuitous Routes: On Returning to South Texas
Not Even Past is republishing this moving and insightful article by Dr Jonathan Cortez to celebrate them joining the faculty of the Department of History at UT Austin as an Assistant Professor of Borderlands History. Dr. Cortez was an Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow when they wrote this piece about the significance of returning to Texas to teach […]
This is Democracy – D-Day and Its Legacies
This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. John W. Hall to discuss the D-Day landing during World War II, and what lessons can be learned from its legacy. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “In Leipzig on D-Day.” John W. Hall is a professor and holder of the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair in […]
Review of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age(2023) by Xaq Frohlich
Go to the supermarket, check out the food information detailing the nutritional facts, buy it, and take it home. These everyday actions define our connection with food and shape who we are as consumers. Through social media, we are constantly confronted with information that associates food with health, wellness, and organic products as an endless […]
Review of Up Against the Law: Radical Lawyers and Social Movements, 1960s-1970s, (2022) by Luca Falciola
The legal cases of activists, including Angela Davis, Huey Newton, and the Chicago Seven, captured public attention throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Crowds crammed into courtrooms to watch these high-profile cases unfold, and many people became directly involved in efforts to free the defendants. While the United States has a long history of trying and […]
Review of Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (2024) by Julia Irwin
The United States became an influential global actor during the twentieth century, cementing its role on the world stage through decisive interventions in both World Wars and via a range of US cultural and technological innovations. So pervasive was the US presence that some scholars have since christened this era the “American Century.” In Catastrophic […]
Review of A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (2022) by Robyn d’Avignon
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 […]