Erstwhile contributing editor Anna Kramer discusses the historical roots of today’s #vanlife movement and how van dwelling has served as a means to play at being homeless while people experiencing homelessness are increasingly under attack.
Erstwhile editor Katie Randall reflects on her experiences as a person of color while researching in German archives.
The members of Erstwhile’s editorial board share their summer reading plans. As in the past, those of us at Erstwhile are wrapping up the school year of weekly posts before our summer hiatus with an offering: two recently published books that we’re really excited to read over the break. This year, all of our choices are nonfiction,…
For May Day, contributing editors Beau Driver and Graeme Pente survey the recent history of teachers’ strikes and the revival of the US labor movement in the face of obscene wealth inequality. In early April, The Atlantic’s coverage of history instructor Thea Hunter’s tragic death circulated widely. Hunter’s early death highlights the growing lack of…
Erstwhile contributing editor Caroline Grego talks about recent-ish music that draws upon the history of the American South for this week’s post. Featured image courtesy Smithsonian Folkways. Rhiannon Giddens, a classically trained, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter intent on re-centering the historical contributions of Black women to American music traditions, gave an interview to National Public Radio one…
Contributing editor Graeme Pente highlights the prescience of nineteenth-century utopian thinker J.A. Etzler and what that might offer us in the face of climate catastrophe. The future is grim. David Wallace-Wells’s recent New York Times bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019) looks unflinchingly at what the latest science on climate change suggests is…
This week, Erstwhile contributing editor Kerri Clement sat down with historian Dr. Coll Thrush from the University of British Columbia to talk about the process of writing and researching not-so-hidden histories found in his works, such as Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (2016), Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (2007), and…
This week at Erstwhile, Travis R May examines crises in the UK’s Labour Party and the US’s Democratic Party in light of the history of anti-Semitism. Since taking office in January, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar has provoked a firestorm of debate in the Capitol and the press, mostly over her criticisms of the…
This week, guest writer Katie Randall (Ph.D. candidate, CU Boulder) writes about her experience in the classroom as a scholar of color. Find her on Twitter at @Katie_Randall2. Several semesters ago, one of my students asked me about the contemporary crisis of memorialization, sparked by the events in Charlottesville, VA, and he added—because I was…
Guest writer Sam Bock (M.A., CU Boulder) places Colorado’s early adoption of Prohibition in social and political context, suggesting the continuing resonances of those circumstances today. A public historian at History Colorado, Sam is developing an exhibit on the history of brewing in the Centennial State. “Beer Here! Brewing the New West” will open in Denver at the beginning…
Erstwhile Contributing Editor Travis R May examines the connections between Marvel’s Black Panther and the ongoing debate surrounding museums and artifact collections acquired during the colonial period. This post does contain spoilers for Black Panther. Writer/Director Ryan Coogler’s first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2018’s Black Panther, is a fairly radical…
This week, Erstwhile editor Kerri Clement caught up with Dr. Brenden Rensink to discuss his new book, Native but Foreign.
