• Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Review of Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (2024) by Julia Irwin

February 13, 2024

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

January 29, 2024

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 […]

Motherhood, Patriotism and Enfranchisement: How Mexican Catholic Women Defined Womanhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century 

January 7, 2024

Motherhood, Patriotism and Enfranchisement: How Mexican Catholic Women Defined Womanhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century

This is Democracy – Middle East in the 1970s and Today

December 4, 2023

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Professor Salim Yaqub to discuss how the 1970s changed the Middle East, and how those changes are still relevant in the modern day. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “To Israel, a Widow.” Salim Yaqub is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa […]

Saving History: Cultural Heritage, Preservation and Public Service

October 25, 2023

In 2018, I was on a research expedition in Caracas, Venezuela. My days were filled with scheduling visits to libraries and repositories to start research for my dissertation on foreign oil companies and their activities in twentieth-century Venezuela. One sunny afternoon, an old mentor from my undergraduate years invited me to his private club. We […]

October 1973: Nixon’s decision to resupply Israel

October 4, 2023

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) […]

The Wars of Oppenheimer

August 22, 2023

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, […]

This Is Democracy: Presidential Law-Breaking

August 9, 2023

This is Democracy

Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Jeffrey Engel to discuss the recent indictments on former president Trump, and other instances of presidential law-breaking. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Some Messes Can Only Be Cleaned Up With Time.” Guest Jeffrey Engel is a professor of history at Southern Methodist University, where he is the […]

This Is Democracy: Iraq War: Lessons and Legacies

August 9, 2023

This is Democracy

Guest Dr. Melvyn P. Leffler is the Edward Stettinius Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is one of the leading historians of U.S. foreign policy. Professor Leffler is the author of numerous prize-winning books, including: A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War; For the Soul […]

This is Democracy: Art of Strategy

August 9, 2023

This is Democracy

Guest Benjamin Griffin is the Chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he is a Major in the U.S. Army. Ben holds a PhD in History from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of: Reagan’s War Stories: A […]

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Recent Posts

  • This is Democracy – Iran-Contra and its Legacies
  • NEP’s Archive Chronicles – Full Series
  • This is Democracy – Free Speech and Repression in Turkey
  • This is Democracy – Israel-Palestine
  • This is Democracy – Broadcasting Democracy
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Teaching
  • Watch & Listen
  • About