Iran: Creativity in the Aftermath of Uprising
Pamela Karimi’s new book examines how Iran’s “Women, Art, Freedom” protest movement has influenced the country’s artists and their work.
Recruiting Warrior Queens for the Rani of Jhansi Regiment
Why did so many plantation workers in Burma, Malaya, and Singapore rush to join the all-woman Rani of Jhansi regiment of the Indian National Army?
Lesbians and the Lavender Scare
Lesbian relationships among government workers were seen as a threat to national security in the 1950s. But what constituted a lesbian relationship was an open question.
A Short Course in Justice: the Freedmen’s Bureau Courts
Freedmen’s Bureau courts provided a forum for newly emancipated people in the “uncertain legal landscape” of the defeated Confederacy.
Lowell’s Forgotten House Mothers
As vital to the success of industrial New England as the mill girls who toiled in the factories were the women who oversaw their lodging.
How to be a Modern Autocrat
In the twenty-first century, dictators are less likely than their predecessors to use violence to suppress dissent, cultivating instead “informational autocracies.”
Eulalie Mandeville’s Fortune in Court Records
Court records can function as a kind of archive for those without any other paper trail in history: free people of color and the enslaved.
The US Army as a Slaveholding Institution
Until the Civil War, US Army officers relied on enslaved servants even while serving in “free states.”
Hocktide: A Medieval Fest of Flirtation and Finances
The springtime holiday of Hocktide not only allowed villagers to cross social boundaries in the name of fun, it helped them raise funds for nonsecular needs.
