Was There a Conspiracy to Kill a Canadian Labor Activist?
While conspiracy theories about Ginger Goodwin’s death may interest some, these complicated explanations deflect our attention from real issues.
Nostalgia for Manly Men in Seventeenth-Century Spain
Moralists found it easy to criticize Spanish men, particularly the high-born among them, for all sorts of supposed failures of masculinity.
The Living Dead Embody Our Worst Fears
Zombie movies are scary fun, but they also help us examine our anxieties about contagious disease and unstoppable chaos.
The International Brigades
Foreigners fighting for Ukraine may call to mind the International Brigades that fought in defense of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
Counting War’s Civilian Dead
Despite claims of precision strikes and the proliferation of smart bombs, the number of civilians killed in war appears staggeringly high.
A Passover Tradition to Promote Jewish Unity
Freeing a prisoner—a gesture of generosity and benevolence—may have been a way to bring together a fractured spiritual community.
Empire: The Russian Way
Russia's rise as an imperial power was built on intercontinental expansion, and a mission of "civilizing, protecting and educating" the conquered.
Mothers Against Mothers in the American West
The participation of white mothers in the "bitter robbery" of Indigenous children from their families was a cruel irony in the colonialist programs of the US and Australia.
Mussolini’s Motherhood Factories
In fascist Italy, childbirth, breastfeeding and motherhood were given a hybrid structure of industrial management and eugenicist biological essentialism.
The NYC –> RUS Yiddish Socialist Pipeline
At the turn of the twentieth century, Yiddish became the language of political organizing for Russian Jews, thanks to the flow of literature from New York.