Patricia J. Williams ‘This Head, These Limbs’ After encountering a mysterious painting of amputation, I found myself thinking about severed legs, personal freedom, contracts, and the law. June 25, 2024
Sean Wilentz The Revolution Within the American Revolution Supported and largely led by slaveholders, the American Revolution was also, paradoxically, a profound antislavery event. October 23, 2023
Meg Weeks ‘The Base of the Labor Pyramid’ Long exploited and denied basic rights, Brazil’s domestic workers continue to organize against an entitled elite. September 17, 2023
Saidiya Hartman The Hold of Slavery In the archive of slavery, I encountered a paradox: the recognition of the slave’s humanity and status as a subject extended and intensified servitude and dispossession. October 24, 2022
Imani Perry Dredging Up the Ever-Living Past “History itself is a form of storytelling. We learn about the human condition, about decency, about love, about cruelty, about all manner of matters.” July 17, 2021
Uki Goñi The Hidden History of Black Argentina A century of European immigration brought with it a comprehensive effort to erase the country’s multiracial past. Only recently has that been reversed. February 8, 2021
Kenan Malik When Monuments Fall Perhaps the best way to express the changing attitudes toward the past is not necessarily to tear down statues, but to put up new ones that allow us to acknowledge the complexities of history. Frederick Douglass himself was of this view. September 9, 2020
R.H. Lossin The Revolutionary Thoreau The idea of our own private Walden is less a desire to be “in nature” than a desperate longing to get out of this awful place. Read in this way, Walden is not primarily a record of the so-called “natural” world but a social commentary. September 4, 2020
Sean Wilentz Senator Cotton’s Distortions on Slavery As far as a Union founded on the “necessary evil” of slavery is concerned, Senator Cotton appears unaware of how profoundly the Constitution of the United States of America differed from that of the Confederate States of America. August 3, 2020
Richard Kreitner A Brief History of Dangerous Others The outside agitator trope has always been, at bottom, a way of putting dissidents in their place. July 27, 2020