Native American midwives weighing a crying Native Amerian child on a set of scales in the hospital at the Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, circa 1945

Call the Midwives—Assuming Any Are Left

While midwife-attended deliveries are the norm in the United Kingdom, they’re the exception in the United States. Time was, this difference wasn’t so stark.
The crescent and star, a symbol of Islam

The Rewards and Risks of Islamic Finance

The principles of Islamic finance date to the seventh century. What do they have to offer to the contemporary global financial system?
The covers of three Chinese Science Fiction novels

What’s so Chinese About Science Fiction from China?

Commentators have latched onto science fiction to explain all manner of social phenomena in China, from unemployment and the economy to air pollution.
Wild Boar Emerges From the Forest on the Island of Kauai, Hawaii.

Feral Pigs, Vengeance, and a World of Languages

Well-researched stories from Hakai Magazine, Sapiens, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Close up hand of voter placing ballot in ballot box

Voting as a Tool for Environmental Justice

Casting a vote at your local polling place helps elect candidates who can enact environmental policies while in office. But is voting enough to bring change?
Slaves waiting for sale, Richmond, VA, 1861

Chains of Credit: The Entrepreneurial Advantage of Slavery

As the financial history of Maryland shows, slavery represented extraordinarily liquid wealth and outsized political power.
Antique wood truncheon club from the 1920s

The Rise of Police Torture in New Orleans

Even as crime rates dropped in the 1930s, the police of New Orleans stepped up their use of torture to obtain confessions from Black Americans accused of crimes.
Wilbert Hunt, 97, the oldest member of the Pueblo of Acoma, casts his ballot at the Acoma Tribal Center in Acoma, New Mexico, 2004

The Fight for Native American Voting Rights

Despite the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, Native American activists have had to repeatedly take their fight for voting rights to Congress.
Internees at the barracks of the internment camp in Boven-Digoel

Boven Digoel, the Prison Camp in the “Siberia of Indonesia”

The number of ethnic Chinese incarcerated in Boven Digoel in the 1920s was low, but the New Guinea colonial prison nonetheless shaped Sino-Malay literature.
Soeur Jeanne by Charles Emmanuel Patas after Charles Monnet

A Mother Superior’s Demons

What does it mean when an entire convent of Urusline nuns appears to be possessed by demons? Many things, as it turns out.