What We're Reading This Week
Zaib un Nisa Aziz
Jill Lepore, The History of the “Riot” Report, The New Yorker
Lepore examines the history of government commissions investigating organized resistance and shows how they became 'albis for inaction'.
Annette Gordon-Reed, Problem of Police Powers for People Living While Black, The New York Review of Books
Relating the experience of being policed while being black in America, Gordon-Reed shows that the issue at the heart of the present crisis is that of the second-class status of black citizenship in the United States.
Annie Olaloku-Teriba, Toppling Statues Is Not About History, It’s About the Present, Frieze
Olaoku-Teriba discusses the stakes of the present debates on historical monuments and public art and argues that historic commemoration is always tied to the present as it is to the past.
Yehor Brailian
Phil Withington, "Public and Private Pleasures", History Today
Phil Withington's article discusses the social roles of coffeehouses in England during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, and the consumption of coffee among the cosmopolitan elite throughout the country.
Matt Elton, "American spotlight: how today’s protests echo historical outrage", HistoryExtra
Elton provides a historical retrospective of the civil rights movement in the USA and considers the current Black Lives Matters protests.
Livia Gershon, "W.E.B. Du Bois Was #BlackintheIvory", JSTOR Daily
Despite his brilliant academic work in sociology, Du Bois nevertheless faced discrimination at Atlanta University. Liva Gershon explains how it happened and why it matters.
Christopher Kissane, "Four Years On", History Workshop
For the Brexit referendum's fourth anniversary, Christopher Kissane analyzes the rewriting of the narratives of British history.
Rustam Khan
Sonia Faleiro, Valley of Unrest. India's Unending Occupation of Kashmir, Harper's Magazine
Sonei Faleiro follows how the situation on the ground in Kashmir has been evolving since India's military annexation of the region.
Ashley Smith, "The Death of Hong Kong's Autonomy: Beyond the Crackdown", Spectre Journal
Ashley Smith interviews activist Au Loong Yu, where they probe the myths and mainstream fallacies about Hong Kong protests.
Osama Esber, "Iraq and the Arab World on the Edge of Abyss: An interview with Kurdish-Iraqi journalist Khalid Suleiman", Jadaliyya
An insightful piece for those interested in the environmental fragility of the region through the work of the prolific Khalid Suleiman.