There was a sense, among very learned folks, that Rome had been something great that had been lost. In their grief, Renaissance scholars pored over classical manuscripts, attempting to build a picture of Rome’s greatness and, perhaps, find a reason for its disintegration. Rome’s fall was bemoaned, even resented by Read more…
Transcript: “For King, Country, and… Opium?: Thinking About Causality, Empire, and Historiography in the First Opium War, 1839-1842“ Researched and written by Averill Earls, PhD Recorded by Averill Earls and Marissa C. Rhodes, PhD Averill: According to the website of Britain’s National Army Museum, the first Opium War started when, Read more…
Swear words shock and offend. They also have a physiological impact on us: we blush, our heart races, and our brain is stimulated. The words that have this power vary over time and space. The history of swear words really drives home the idea that the past is a foreign Read more…
On December 16th, 1929, thousands of Igbo women gathered outside the colonial government compound in Opobo. They were there to demand the end of British imperialism in Eastern Nigeria, though the British seemed oblivious to the intention and motivations of these women. What they saw were erratic, reactive women wielding Read more…
Tea, it turns out, is a bottomless commodity history. As historian Erika Rappaport notes, at various times over the last two thousand years, “In Asia, the Near East, Europe, and North America, tea was a powerful medicine, a dangerous drug, a religious and artistic practice, a status symbol, an aspect Read more…
Elizabeth: It’s 1926 and you’re in a mine cage, a type of elevator contraption that slowly descends down the shaft of a coal mine. The air gets colder and colder as the light disappears from above and you are plunged into darkness, lit only by a single dim bulb attached Read more…
In mid-March of 2022, a video spread virally across social media platforms: an elephant with its trunk wrapped around the top bar of its enclosure, its eye casting an anxious look out. A keeper pats his cheek and holds an apple, trying to comfort the distressed animal. The elephant was Read more…
Malintzin is by far the most controversial figure of the 1519 Mexican invasion. Was she a traitor, or a feminist national hero? Was she the mother of Mexico, or the Eve-like bringer of Mexico’s original sin? Was she a collaborator, bystander, or victim of the Spanish? In terms of her Read more…
Whether we’ve ever really given it any study, we’re all at least a little familiar with the link between the Nazi party and the occult. Movies like Captain America and Hellboy have plot lines that center on supernatural obsessions of Nazi leadership, desperately trying to find magical or supernatural ways Read more…
Symphysiotomy. Probably not a word you’ve heard before – and if you have, I’m sorry? Symphysiotomy is an obstetric procedure in which a person’s pubic symphysis cartilage is cut to widen the pelvis for childbirth. Yes. Gross. I know. For most of the 19th century, symphysiotomy was a new solution Read more…