Salvation, Science and Synthetic Rubber

Official tallies put the death toll inflicted by the Pinochet regime in Chile over three thousand, while the imprisoned and tortured numbered over thirty-eight thousand. Not to mention almost two hundred thousand, one in every fifty Chileans, who went into exile. Staggering as those numbers might be, such statistics represent but a fraction of real victims. Most of the dictatorial blowback happened under the radar, […]
Revisiting Into the Wild

In June 2020, controversial monuments began to come down across America. This time, not only were confederate statues on the menu—those of Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Christopher Columbus and even (in Portland, Oregon) George Washington were as well. Tied to larger protests against police brutality and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is no […]
A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America by Anya Zilberstein (2016)

Centuries before contemporary debates about anthropogenic climate change took shape, early British settlers to New England and Nova Scotia believed that they could “improve” the climate of these otherwise inhospitable regions by placing the land under cultivation. In A Temperate Empire, Anya Zilberstein draws from a rich primary source base to analyze how these early […]
The Long History and Legacy of Slavery in the Americas and Beyond

Over the past decade, Not Even Past has published a wide range of resources that focus on the history of slavery. These are intended for use in the classroom and are collected here as a resource for teachers. Articles White Women and the Economy of Slavery White slave-owning women were not the only ones to […]
Film Review – Ayka (Dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy, 2018)

by Lilya Kaganovsky A longer version of this review was originally published on KinoKultura In the second season of BBC America’s TV show Killing Eve, we are introduced to a new villain, whom Eve Polastri labels “The Ghost.” In every way, The Ghost is the main villain’s polar opposite: while Villanelle’s killings are elaborately staged […]
Romero

The most terrible things are quickly learned, And beauty will cost us our lives. -Silvio Rodríguez A romero is a pilgrim, comrade. I guess we are all pilgrims, to some degree, though some pilgrimages seem to go on forever, while others end abruptly. When Pope John Paul II came to Chile in April of ’87, […]
“London is Drowning and I, I Live by the River”: The Clash’s London Calling at 40

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 […]
Medieval Facial Hair in Major League Baseball

by Guy Raffa What is it with baseball players and whiskers? The 2013 Red Sox perfected the art of beard-bonding on the way to their third World Series championship in ten years. Boston players and their fans rallied around what Christopher Oldstone-Moore calls the “quest beard” in his history of facial hair, Of Beards and […]
Death, Danger, and Identity at 12,000 Feet

by Jesse Ritner On February 1, 1894, Frank Cook stumbled down from the Elk Mountain range, passed through the frozen town of Ashcroft, and trudging through the deep Colorado snow arrived in Aspen, Colorado. His mining partner, Mr. Spake, was dead. Mining accidents were common in late nineteenth-century Colorado. Mr. Cook, likely weary and cold […]
