It’s a relatively new term for a concept as old as time.
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Memory and the Lost Cause
An incomplete nostalgia still undergirds parts of American life.
The Weather and the Wall
Climate change and the border wall are more connected than you might think.
On Blackface, Bert Williams, and Excellence
A complicated racial anxiety rests at the heart of American entertainment.
The Ladies Who Were Famous for Wanting to Be Left Alone
The Ladies of Llangollen fell in love, ran away together, and lived a scholarly life of “delicious seclusion” — secluded, that is, except for all the visitors.
George Washington Lived in an Indian World, But His Biographies Have Erased Native People
Telling Washington’s story without erasing the people and lands that preoccupied him leads to important new questions; like, just how consequential for American history was the first president’s addiction to land speculation?
A Minor Figure
While searching for photographs that depict black young women and girls living free in the second and third generations born after slavery, Saidiya Hartman finds a disturbing image.
Monopoly vs. the Magic Cape
Trust busting is a great idea. But would it be enough?
Decolonizing Knowledge: Stefan Bradley on the Fight for Civil Rights in the Ivy League
In the 1960s, black students at the Ivies organized and protested for fair treatment, their personal safety, to create black studies programs, and to stop their universities from harming local black communities through expansion and urban renewal.
Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology
Glory Edim talks about editing her new anthology, the push for equity in publishing, and how black women writers have written themselves into spaces that neglect or ignore them.
