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History

Arts in Society

The Woman Erased from Bauhaus History

Lucia Moholy helped create the visual language of the Bauhaus, but when she fled the Nazis her work was stolen by Walter Gropius. With interest renewed by the Bauhaus centennial, will she finally receive recognition?

Elizabeth Hoover

Law & Justice, Politics

American Democracy Is in the Mail

U.S. democracy and the U.S. postal service share a long, entangled history. An attack against one signals an attack against the other.

Daniel Carpenter

Philosophy & Religion

The Angel of History

Pestilence and plague have often prompted waves of apocalyptic thinking, calling into question the steady march of progress in human history.

John Merrick

Philosophy & Religion

Repertoires of Rage

Anger’s history—along with the very fact that it has one—can shed light on the hypertrophied emotional climate of today.

David Konstan

Race

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Brent Cebul

Global Justice

No Democracy Without Archives

Fifteen years old this week, Guatemala’s National Police archive has helped prosecute numerous officials for their roles in the country’s civil war. Now shuttered by a Trump-backed government, its dramatic history illustrates the crucial role of state archives in protecting democracy.

Kirsten Weld

Race

The Revolution at the Gate

Photos of Mark and Patricia McCloskey waving guns at St. Louis Black Lives Matter protesters became instantly iconic. But the McCloskeys are also only a symptom of how racism is served by private property.

Walter Johnson

Science & Nature

How Epidemics End

Contrary to hopes for a tidy conclusion to the COVID-19 pandemic, history shows that outbreaks of infectious disease often have much murkier outcomes—including simply being forgotten about, or dismissed as someone else’s problem.

Jeremy A. Greene, Dora Vargha

Politics

Confederates in the Capitol

The National Statuary Collection announced the unification of the former slave economy’s emotional heartland with the heart of national government.

William Hogeland

Science & Nature

The Shape of Epidemics

Waves have taken pride of place in the COVID-19 crisis, serving not just to predict but also to persuade. Their special blend of mathematical and moral messaging will shape the future of the pandemic.

David S. Jones, Stefan Helmreich

Law & Justice

Policing the World

Since World War II, the United States has spread its style of policing—and police technology—around the world as a way to exert control. This link between modern policing and the national security state means they will have to be democratized together.

Andrew Lanham

Philosophy & Religion

The Unfinished Project of Enlightenment

In a sweeping new history of Western philosophy, Jürgen Habermas narrates the progress of humanity through the unfolding of public reason. Missing from that story are the systems of violence and dispossession whose legacies are all too visible today.

Brandon Bloch

       

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