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Blogs

The Future is Female?: Griselda, Top Girls, and Rethinking Feminist Subjectivity

by Holly Crocker | 10.22.2019

Sacrifice and care are attributes that are difficult to map onto commonplace understandings of subjectivity. Perhaps that is because subjectivity has long been thought in gendered ways that leave little place for the seemingly feminine.

When the Imperial Baroque State Is Not Sufficiently Baroque

by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra | 09.30.2019

It is difficult to envision the sheer quantity of pearls dredged up from the New World by sixteenth-century colonists. An average of a 1,000 pounds of pearl per year in tax revenue alone. The social, political, and ecological challenges of producing such richness is the subject of a fascinating book by historian Molly Walsh reviewed here.

Searching for Cavafy's House in Istanbul

by Gregory Jusdanis | 09.21.2019

Searching for the childhood haunts of the great poet Cavafy reveals both what has been lost to time and what remains alive in human memory.

Earliest Gestures

by Carrie Noland | 06.03.2019

Can you recall your earliest gesture? Perhaps not consciously, but traces of these first attempts to orient our bodies in space linger in our everyday experiences.

The Pirate as Conquistador: Plunder and Politics in the Making of the British Empire

by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra | 05.06.2019

Pirate or privateer? In practice, identical, but in terms of legal and social standing, the designations were considered worlds away in the contested waters of the North Atlantic. How did sanctioned privateering transition over time to being considered lawless pirating?

New Zealand Attack: On Bridges and Walls

by Ali Shakir | 04.22.2019

In memory of the horrendous attack at the mosques in New Zealand, a defence of migrants, refugees, and a plea for moderation to confront the extremism that threatens further attacks.

Tenochtitlan Becomes Mexico: Rulers, Commoners, and the Petitioning State

by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra | 04.09.2019

After the conquest, Tenochtitlan became Mexico, but the city remained predominantly indigenous. As a viceregal capital and global commercial hub, Mexico City underwent profound changes as ethnic newcomers from Oaxaca to Manila elbowed out the Nahua from their barrios, and Aztec systems of water management survived even as dikes and canals were modified.

Returning to Order through Realism

by Santiago Zabala | 04.03.2019

Law and Order is the familiar rallying cry for a generation of contemporary right-wing politicians from Poland and Turkey to Brazil and the USA. In the context of such a political program, difference, change, and cultural others must be avoided as disruptions of the safety that order is supposed to represent.

The Problem of Sancho's Shit

by Ricardo Padrón | 03.25.2019

Are there limits to the pursuit of realism in fiction? For Cervantes, at least, those limits are to be found somewhere in between three hundred goats and the bodily needs of Sancho Panza.

Against Hate: "Hello, Brother" (V)

by Mohammad Salama | 03.16.2019

In the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, a reflection on the need to confront hatred, to come together as one human community and to learn that our difference is the formative experience of existence on earth.