Essay Approaching 2024: A perspective on opposition and democracy from Indian history November 08, 2023 Next year, the world’s largest democracy will head to the polls. Narendra Modi’s dominant ethnomajoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies will seek to win a third straight victory in India’s General Election. At this crucial crossroads, it is worth reflecting upon the history of one opposition party during the original era of one-party dominance. Read More
Podcast American Classicist November 03, 2023 Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) didn’t publish her first book until she was sixty-two. But over the next three decades, this former headmistress would become the twentieth century’s most famous interpreter of the classical world. Read More
Essay Bidenomics and the Hillbilly Highway October 12, 2023 No region in the country has witnessed a greater decline in its manufacturing employment rate during the twenty-first century than the southeast. Regional deindustrialization, as much if not more so than the politics of racial resentment, explains the current era of one-party Republican rule in the South. Read More
Essay Dog diplomacy October 03, 2023 The habit of judging a political figure by their dog may seem to be a distinctively medieval preoccupation. Yet it is by no means alien to modern political discourse. Read More
Podcast Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man September 28, 2023 In some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure—a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. Read More
Essay The joke’s on whom? September 19, 2023 Amidst the uproar that ensued after the incident at the Oscars ceremony last year, there were writers and reporters who pointed out that Chris Rock was exercising the age-old tradition of the “fool’s license.” If we actually go to the historical record on court and household fools, then we find an even more interesting, but also more complex, backdrop to the discussion on whether it is right or not to get angry at a comedian for making a joke. Read More
Essay Bill Clinton’s failure September 13, 2023 By 1995 Bill Clinton was fighting to remain “relevant” to the politics of his day. Many would soon label Clinton a “Democratic Eisenhower,” leading a party whose electoral success was predicated upon a wholesale accommodation to the ideologies of its opponents. Read More
Essay From empire to federation? The view from the Middle East August 22, 2023 The European Union, India, the United States of America, and the United Arab Emirates all have something in common: they are all types of federations. Read More
Essay Rabbis in the Roman public bathhouse: Ancient perspectives on modern sensibilities May 03, 2023 The figure of the rabbi, whether modern or ancient, seems far removed from the corporeal reality of a Roman public bathhouse—or at least that’s what we would assume. Yet, the vast body of writings, known collectively as Rabbinic Literature, paints an entirely different picture. Read More
Interview In dialogue: Writing women’s history March 27, 2023 We asked four of our authors the following question: What do we find when we read ‘women’ into histories that often exclude them? Read More
Podcast The World the Plague Made November 15, 2022 In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. Read More
Essay Prague’s infinite shades of gray November 10, 2022 Interwar Prague was an avant-garde hotbed, but the first exhibition of Czech art to take place at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was not devoted to Czech modernism. Read More
Essay Capitalism: The word and the thing October 12, 2022 Capitalism is a word used variously to describe an economic and social system, a modern form of political power, a dynamic mode of production, a stage in a world-historical process running from feudalism to communism, a western object of ideological allegiance, a durable form of inequality or, more simply, a thing. Read More
Essay When rules don’t rule July 21, 2022 Rules: there are so many of them, and all so very various. Rules for where to place that third fork in a formal table setting, rules for when to clap at concerts, rules for deciding who has the right of way at an intersection, rules for how to play games, rules for declaring taxable income, rules for how to greet friends—a firm handshake (Germany), alternating pecks on the cheek (France), a bow and clasped hands (India), or a hug (the U.S.). Read More
Essay Why Europe? Y. Pestis July 18, 2022 During the Middle Ages, two formidable species pervaded West Eurasia: homo sapiens (humans) and rattus rattus (black rats). The two disliked each other, but literally lived in each other’s homes. In 1345, the Black Death reached them. Read More
