The past is never dead. It's not even past
By Yoav Di-Capua On Monday evening, September 28, 1970, Egyptian radio and television abruptly began to broadcast recitations of the Quran. It was a familiar sign that something of great significance had gone horribly wrong. Egyptians had heard it before – when they lost the June 1967 war and again, eighteen months earlier, when a […]
In this conversation, Dr. Peniel Joseph discusses his new book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders. This is part II […]
With Joan Neuberger This is a conversation with Dr. Joan Neuberger, the Founding Editor of Not Even Past. Not Even Past was born in 2010 and launched in January 2011. In 2020, it marks its ten-year anniversary. Since its creation, the site has emerged as a robust and influential platform for Public History. This owes a great deal to the […]
by Denise Gomez On March 7, 1979, just one day before International Women’s Day, the highly influential American feminist scholar, Kate Millet, appeared in Tehran, in the Iranian Revolution’s afterglow. Invited alongside other prominent feminist scholars and activists to speak at a demonstration organized by Iranian woman activists, Millet was accompanied by her partner and […]
When Public History is done so well, we want to celebrate it! In Fall 2018, our colleague in Art History, Dr. Stephennie Mulder, had her students rewrite articles on Wikipedia to be more accurate and based on up-to-date scholarship. To be honest, I’ve thought about doing something like this in my classes, but I would never […]
Films about historical events have enormous power to affect us, both to enlighten and to mislead. Historical films are perennially popular, often because they tell history through individual lives, because they invent characters and add personal, emotional drama to events that we want to learn about. Those same fictionalizing qualities make them great tools for […]
Empires ancient and modern are large, hierarchical organizations, structurally founded on deep inequalities of risk and reward. The British Empire in Asia was no exception. At the front lines of imperial power were, all too often, common men (and some women) who were tricked, cozened, misled, coerced, and whipped into serving as the cannon-fodder of […]
Cross-posted from Chris Rose’s blog, where he regularly tells us Important and Useful Things and makes us laugh along the way. In addition to his many other accomplishments, Chris is the brains and motor behind our podcast 15 Minute History. by Christopher Rose Ladies and Gentleman, I give you … Terrorism and Extremist Movements. Ta-Da!The reaction […]
From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy, and his political recipes for self-emancipation, guided the project of Arab liberation. From the very beginning, Middle Eastern intellectuals considered Sartre’s ideas rich, meaningful and appropriate for their needs. Their goal was ambitious: the invention of a new type of Arab man and woman: sovereign, authentic, self-confident, self-sufficient, proud, willing to sacrifice and therefore, existentially free.