Essays

In The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, James C. Scott proposes a paradigm shift in the historical understanding of populations living outside state control–from the view embedded in the …

What happens when a revolution is turned on its head? When the lines between dominators and dominated become blurred? When it is no longer clear who is writing history? These are the questions confronting any study …

Just as the distrust, antagonism, and apparent irreconcilability of the Cold War polarized global affairs into communist-Soviet and capitalist-Western camps, so too did it divide the narrative of twentieth century art history. Representing a withered branch …

The Nicaraguan Revolution was a revolution in culture. After 500 years of imperialism, cultural policy was to rescue indigenous practices and progressive intellectualism that the Somozas had systemically marginalized, express the country’s recent history of the …

When East Germans, looking at atlases of their country in the years 1960 to 1989, searched for maps of their capital, they often found images such as that in figure 1. Juxtaposed next to the urban …

To be in a situation where people might die, or live in misery, if you weren’t there, is meaningful…I thought the HOPE needed me. Now I think I need the HOPE.[1] An unnamed volunteer aboard the …

The Iraqi government’s response to the Arab Spring-inspired “Day of Rage” protests in 2011 reflects the fine line the country often crosses between taking necessary steps to preserve security in a developing democracy, and authoritarianism. Understood …

Little more than three decades since the opening of China’s economy under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the country has emerged as the greatest force reshaping the global economy and, with it, the global balance of …

Today, we live in a world of networked global communities, drawn together by the recent technological boom.  This unprecedented degree of interconnectivity has affected every size and kind of social organization, from the American government to …