The past is never dead. It's not even past
One serious historian shares the big dream of a one-world federation. Do we share the dream? Importantly, how do we evaluate this future-oriented invitation? What does that do for “history”? If the reputed English historian Anthony Pagden (UCLA)[1] does it, it must be legitimate. Beyond States: Powers, Peoples and Global Order is a slim, manageable, and erudite book of […]
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 adds an innovative account of India’s twentieth century to the historiography of race science. As the head of the Department of History at Ashoka University in Haryana, India, Mukharji engages with subaltern studies and decolonial writings of South Asian history. The title echoes psychiatrist and […]
This article coincides with an upcoming public talk at UT on Pauliceia 2.0, January 28 at 4:00 p.m. For more details, please visit the event page. While passing through Austin on vacation in 2015, Brazilian historian Luis Ferla went for a walk across the UT campus. He was mulling over new projects for the research lab […]
In The Sewards of New York, Thomas P. Slaughter offers a captivating exploration of the Seward family’s multifaceted place in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although not written as a traditional political biography, Slaughter emphasizes that “politics, and particularly the abolition of slavery” remains central to the Sewards’ collective story (p. 2). Slaughter looks beyond […]
This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Michael Vorenberg about the difficulties of ending wars in democracies. Their discussion includes various perspectives on when the Civil War truly ended, the challenges of war termination, Lincoln’s approach toward reconciliation, and the lasting impacts of unresolved conflicts. Zachary sets the scene with the poem “O Captain! My […]
Anasa Hicks has written an engaging and chronologically ambitious study of gender, labor, and race in Cuban history with her book Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution. Hicks traces the effort to create and deploy the “black doméstica” stereotype—an association of domestic service with African-descended women—throughout late 19th and 20th […]
“Muhammad’s Law” in Latin America invites readers to explore Islam in the early modern Iberian Atlantic—a historiographical field examining the interconnected histories of Islam across the Atlantic world. It is rooted in the lived experiences of Muslims who crossed the ocean, the metaphorical uses of “Muslimness” in Iberian colonial thought, and the material and intellectual […]
A major question among scholars of freedom and slavery in the Atlantic world concerns the extent to which Indigenous African characteristics were successfully transferred to the Americas and survived enslavement, a system of formalized debasement, and dominant European or American social and political systems. This sprawling question has generated intense academic debate. Published in 1976, […]
The 19th century in American history is marked by rapid territorial expansion, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Mexican-American War. By 1850, the continental U.S. had taken a familiar shape. The Civil War interrupted this expansion as the nation grappled with the future of slavery and the role of the federal government. However, at the […]
Thomas Jackson’s story has been largely untold, but the record he left behind demands historical analysis. His erudite letters have much to contribute to our understanding of the abolitionist movement, the evolution of attitudes to race, and everyday experiences of the U.S. Civil War. Jackson’s status as a British immigrant also provides us with an […]