Whenever I mention that I’ve just written a book on slavery and literature in Cuba in the nineteenth century, the conversation almost immediately turns to the present. Do I travel to Cuba? How do Cubans...
In the recent Christopher Nolan film “The Odyssey” we see a curious depiction of Circe transforming Odysseus’ crew of sailors into pigs. The cinematic representation drips with Circe’s disdain...
Here in the United States, history is a recent phenomenon. This summer, the U.S. celebrated its 250th birthday. That’s not nothing, of course, but it pales before many sovereign nations in Europe that...
On the publication of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World in 1762, the British Magazine described it as ‘Light, agreeable summer reading, partly original, partly borrowed’. In his Lectures...
Both climate change and the ocean have always been topics I felt drawn to. Both felt scientific, urgent, and practical, and they somehow involved the outdoors, which, for me, as a lawyer working inside...
Our guess is that most people’s arms are still bolted tightly to their sides. If so, this book is for you. Constitutionalising Anarchy blows a hole in the conventional claim made by legal and political...
Transnational repression, understood as the extraterritorial repressive actions by states against members of their national community abroad, has become a global phenomenon. One commentator even suggested...
Every day there is a media story about public opposition to immigration fueling the populist far-right in Europe. Academic public opinion research has a similar slant, with endless studies about...
In the summer of 1999, I was studying English at a language center in Canada, one voice among hundreds of accents crowding the poster-lined hallways. A teacher there, Mr. Wilson, was not someone I had...
In 2015, a group of Danish and Brazilian researchers gathered in Belo Horizonte for what we jokingly called The First International Workshop on Learning in Practice. We chose that title with a certain...
When Maria de la Concepción boarded the ship out of Lisbon bound for Brazil, she never could have anticipated her eventual challenges. After providing an enslaved woman in Mexico with a love potion,...
When Michel de Montaigne asked his famous question, “What do I know? (Qui sçay-je?)” in the longest of his essays, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond,” what he was asking was whether he could know...