Caroline Winterer— What happened to enlightened ideas after the long eighteenth century? As more scholars are placing ideals of enlightenment in their global contexts, we are learning that the conventional understandings of the fate of enlightenment no longer hold. Enlightenment did not end with the movement called Romanticism, its ideals
Anders Walker— Now that the lawsuit between Harper Lee’s estate and Broadway producer Scott Rudin is settled, the question remains whether the stage version of Atticus Finch is going to remain faithful to the beloved lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird. According to Lee’s estate, Finch was a “model of
Alan I. Abramowitz— On the night of June 5, while most of the nation’s attention was focused on the results of California’s crucial “top two” primary, something unusual happened in the state of Alabama—and this time it didn’t involve Roy Moore. A Republican U.S. House incumbent named Martha Roby was
John R. Bockstoce— The fur trade in North America was an important part of the continent’s economic and social evolution. For better and for worse, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the fur trade caused changes in Native American societies. It provided wealth but simultaneously pushed the boundaries of
Anders Walker— Fifty years after Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy remains closely tied to integration, to Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the creation of a society where, as King himself put it in 1963, “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
Floyd Abrams— American law could hardly be more inconsistent. When a family of religious zealots that formed what it characterized as the Westboro Baptist Church carried signs a thousand feet from a church where the death of an American soldier in Afghanistan was being mourned, saying that his death was deserved
We discuss the Mark Bradford exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC with the curator of that show, Evelyn Hankins. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Spotify Further Reading: YaleUniversity · A conversation with the curator of Mark Bradford's monumental installation Pickett's Charge
Victor Bulmer-Thomas— Sanctions have always played a part in conflicts among states and between states and non-state actors. However, their use by the United States government has accelerated in recent years. There are now nearly twenty countries subject to US sanctions and roughly ten sets of sanctions that are not
Gregory D. Smithers— During the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Cherokee people experienced an unprecedented series of challenges to their established modes of life. The matrilineal and matrilocal social structures that gave Cherokee life its meaning and purpose were increasingly exposed to an overlapping series of imperial political,
Steve Pincus— George Washington’s understanding of America’s founding document as a call for an energetic government stands in stark contrast with the majority of interpretations of the Declaration. Whereas Washington complained that the British imperial state since 1760 had done too little to promote the welfare and happiness of colonial