History

Leaving Behind the Yellow Submarine

Mentorship is how the humanities justify themselves.

  • Jo Guldi

The Souls of White Folk

What can W. E. B. Du Bois and the black radical tradition tell us about Trump’s election and radical political action today?

  • Walter Johnson

Putin’s More Perfect Union

The idea that Putin is driven by the philosophy of Eurasianism obscures the pragmatism of Russia’s foreign policy.

  • Jordan Michael Smith

The New World Order

The 1850s were a turning point for globalization, from telegraphs to colonization.

  • Matthew Karp

Deconstruction: An American Tale

Lampooned as a dangerous import from Paris, deconstruction is in fact a distinctively American phenomenon.

  • Gregory Jones-Katz

Between Experts and Citizens

Brexit is an episode in the long contest between rulers and the working class.

  • Jo Guldi

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Black Nationalism and Liberation

Integration doesn’t guarantee equality or freedom.

  • Garrett Felber

Queers Against Hate

Radical gay liberation laid the ground for the moderate legal gains of gay rights.

  • Michael Bronski

The Ideology of the Olympics

The Olympics have long tried to obscure the political nature of sport.

  • Robert L. Kehoe III

Racial Violence in Black and White

Images of violence against African Americans have a radical heritage as instruments of critique.

  • Benjamin Balthaser

Jefferson: Hero or Villain? It’s Complicated.

It is almost impossible to grasp how much Thomas Jefferson believed in progress.

  • Richard Kreitner

The Religious-Liberty Attack on Transgender Rights

Conservative Christians are out to restore their historical legal privileges.

  • David Sehat

Uncertain Death

Critics take for granted that Primo Levi killed himself. But doubts remain.

  • Diego Gambetta

What Good Is History for African Americans?

To be useful, it has to help us think about who we should become as a nation.

  • Melvin Rogers

Rights vs. Duties

In the age of human rights, the language of duties has withered.

  • Samuel Moyn

What’s in a Name?

Yale’s president can’t make something less racist by fiat.

  • Karléh Wilson

The Base

With Bernie Sanders’s campaign reeling, what’s next for progressive activists?

  • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The Privatization of Hope

Among the casualties of neoliberalism is the very possibility of solidarity.

  • Ronald Aronson

Holy Wars

Secularism is fundamental to liberal governance. But is it sustainable?

  • James G. Chappel

Still Tilting at Windmills

On the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’s death, Spain struggles to honor its literary heritage

  • Stephen Phelan

The Look of Disaster

Comic books can document the horrors of war better than photos.

  • Elizabeth Hand

The Roots of Black Incarceration

A nineteenth-century memoir sheds light on the origins of the modern prison.

  • Joy James

The Racist Dawn of Capitalism

Recent histories of slavery and capitalism ignore radical black scholarship.

  • Peter James Hudson

Machinations of Wicked Men

Niall Ferguson’s authorized biography falsifies Henry Kissinger’s intellectual legacy.

  • Jonathan Kirshner
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