The past is never dead. It's not even past
The year 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement and the 70th anniversary of the ending of the Communist Revolution in China. Beginning with the unreserved embrace of Western values by “enlightenment” intellectuals, the three decades following World War I in China witnessed dramatic transformation on all fronts, ending in the establishment […]
By María Esther Hammack An earlier version of this story was published on Fourth Part of the World. I wasn’t looking to find a story of abounding love when researching violent episodes of Texas history. Then I ran across a Texas newspaper article that shed a brief light on the lives of a Black woman […]
This month on Not Even Past we are celebrating the accomplishments of seventeen students who completed their doctoral dissertations and received their PhDs in History in 2018-2019. Above you see some of them pictured. Below you will find each of their names and the title of their dissertations. Many of these students were also contributors […]
By Edward Shore Carlitos da Silva was an activist and community leader from São Pedro, one of 88 settlements founded by descendants of escaped slaves known in Portuguese as quilombos, located in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil’s Ribeira Valley. During the early 1980s, amid an onslaught of government projects to develop the Ribeira Valley through […]
By Lina del Castillo The powerful myth of ‘American exceptionalism’ would have us think that the United States alone offered the world universal ideals of democracy, self-determination, and shared prosperity. However, if we open our eyes beyond canonical nineteenth-century writers such as Alexis de Tocqueville, an alternate story emerges. The long-ignored yet staggering number of […]
By Nicholas Roland On March 23, 1961, recently-inaugurated President John F. Kennedy held a press conference at the State Department on Laos, a country little-known to most Americans at the time. Using a series of oversized maps, Kennedy detailed the advance of Communist Laotian and North Vietnamese forces in the country’s northeastern provinces. Rejecting an […]
By Edmund T. Gordon For almost two decades, Ted Gordon has been leading tours of UT Austin that show how racism, patriarchy, and politics are baked into the landscape and architecture of the campus. This month, that tour goes live online. In honor of the launch of the new website, “The Racial Geography Tour,” we […]
By Edward Watson On February 7, Seattle’s non-profit broadcaster KEXP headed to London for their seventh annual International Clash Day. In celebration of The Clash’s London Calling turning 40 in December 2019, KEXP organized a 4-day live broadcast in Seattle and London, featuring performances from contemporary bands and covers of The Clash’s songs. Their intention […]
Power, he argues, was “promiscuous” in sixteenth-century Michoacán because there were dozens of claimants to overlapping jurisdictions: indigenous nobilities, native commoners, encomenderos (tributary lords responsible for conversion of entrusted indigenous communities), bishops, parish priests, friars, audiencia (high court) magistrates, alcaldes mayores (city mayors), city councils, corregidores (regional authorities), viceroys, general inquisitors, inquisitorial delegates, cathedral chapters, […]
In 1849, sixty-five “ladies of Fayette County” Tennessee wanted their State legislature to know that a central dimension of patriarchy was failing. In a collective petition, they highlighted the ways that this failure was unfolding and how it impacted the lives of Tennessee women, particularly those who were married or who were soon to be […]