Essay The fall of Kabul and the new decolonization September 28, 2021 The collapse of the Western-backed regime in Afghanistan in August 2021, and the subsequent images of the chaotic retreat of the American-led forces from Kabul Airport—grandiosely named after the former President of a now-defunct regime, Hamid Karzai—fits easily into the photo album of contemporary history. Read More
Essay The three ages of India’s democracy August 26, 2021 The comparative study of democracies has long since determined that this type of regime warrants qualification. While liberal democracy remains an ideal form, many “hybrids” that blend this archetype with other political genres have long existed. Read More
Interview Tonio Andrade on The Last Embassy July 12, 2021 George Macartney’s disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Read More
Essay A look inside A World Divided June 28, 2021 Hoi An is a lovely Vietnamese town, one that managed to survive, largely unscathed, the wars that ravaged the country in the twentieth century. Read More
Essay The fall of Masada June 24, 2021 Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children reportedly chose to take their own lives rather than suffer enslavement or death at the hands of the Roman army. Read More
Essay A look inside Eva Palmer Sikelianos June 15, 2021 I was myself introduced to Eva Palmer Sikelianos while leafing through books and magazines about Greece in my parents’ library in the 1960s and 1970s. Read More
Podcast Listen in: Eva Palmer Sikelianos June 08, 2021 Listen to an audio sample from Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins, a new book about the American actor, director, composer, and weaver best known for reviving the Delphic Festivals. Read More
Interview By Design | An Infinite History June 04, 2021 Emma Rothschild’s An Infinite History is a history of infinite possibilities. The book traces the fortunes of a single family and its descendants across space and time, beginning with an ordinary, illiterate woman—Marie Aymard—in an ordinary, provincial part of France—Angoulême—in a time that was drifting towards political revolution and economic transformation. Read More
Essay From equal rights to full rights May 18, 2021 The Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1923, has resurfaced in 2021 after a long sleep. Whether it becomes part of the US Constitution is anyone’s guess, as is the practical effect of such a change given the conservative tilt of the Supreme Court. Read More
Essay Jenny White on the graphic novel and the complicated roots of political violence May 10, 2021 I first arrived in Turkey as a young woman in 1975 to study at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, unaware that Turkey was experiencing a low-level civil war. Read More
Podcast American feminists and the global fight for democratic equality May 03, 2021 Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Read More
Essay Turkish Kaleidoscope musical playlist April 28, 2021 The Turkish Kaleidoscope Musical Playlist is a kaleidoscopic view of the musical backdrop from 1970s Turkey. It explores the music scene of the period, from Anatolian rock & pop to modern & traditional folk music (türkü) and arabesk. Read More
Video Turkish Kaleidoscope book trailer April 21, 2021 Turkish Kaleidoscope is a powerful graphic novel that traces Turkey’s descent into political violence in the 1970s through the experiences of four students on opposing sides of the conflict. Read More
Essay A new vocabulary for social life March 27, 2021 What if we lived in a society where women had the power to make the world anew? What would life look like today if women played a definitive part in governance and had the resources to create sustainable lives? Read More
Essay The hidden economic lives of women March 18, 2021 Women are everywhere in economic life, and nowhere very much in economic history. In Joseph Vernet’s great series of paintings of the 1750s and 1760s, the waterfronts of the ports of France are crowded with women pulling carts and selling fish, talking and bargaining. Read More