Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast (University of Washington Press, 2020), edited by Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Aldona Jonaitis, foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of this rich context and its historical erasure within the discipline of art history.
By centering voices that uphold Indigenous priorities, integrating the expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders about their artistic heritage, and questioning current institutional practices, these new essays "unsettle" Northwest Coast art studies. Key themes include discussions of cultural heritage protections and Native sovereignty; re-centering women and their critical role in transmitting cultural knowledge; reflecting on decolonization work in museums; and examining how artworks function as living documents. The volume exemplifies respectful and relational engagement with Indigenous art and advocates for more accountable scholarship and practices.
Kirstin L. Ellsworth holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art from Indiana University and is Associate Professor of Art History at California State University Dominguez Hills.
The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (Harper, 2021) is a magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument.
Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”.
Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument.
Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast.
Two very thoughtful oddfellows--a labor economist and a Russian literature scholar--take on the world's problems in their newest collaboration, Minds Wide Shut How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro bring to bear the remarkably powerful tool of great 19th century Realist literature (and other parts of the Western canon) to define and counter the all-or-nothing fundamentalisms that have come to divide us in recent years. They touch upon politics, religion and economics, as well as great literature itself, and advocate bridging the divides with assertion and dialogue rather than the crude dismissal of opponents based upon absolute, unyielding assumptions.
Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Hermes in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at DanielxPeris@gmail.com or via Twitter @HistoryInvestor. His History and Investing blog and Keep Calm & Carry On Investing podcast are at https://strategicdividendinvestor.com/
Join naturalist and science writer Leigh Calvez on her adventures into science and spirit of animals, as we discuss her two recent books: The Hidden Lives of Owls, and The Breath of the Whale(Sasquatch Books, 2016 and 2019, respectively). Calvez makes the science and research entertaining and accessible, describing the social behavior of owls and whales while exploring the questions about the human-animal connection. Our conversation highlights the impressive resilience and intelligence of the animals we have the pleasure to share the world with, the role of research and intuition in field work studies, in addition to the complexity of ethical decisions we humans must make to ensure and perpetuate a diverse and healthy ecosystem for every creature.
Leigh Calvez has worked with whales and dolphins as a scientist, naturalist and nature writer, her work featured in Smithsonian Magazine, High Country News, The Ecologist, Ocean Realm, The Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Bainbridge Island Magazine. She also teaches private writing classes and lives near Seattle, Washington, with her daughter Ellie and their two cats.
Sarah (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread.
Immigration in the 21st Century: The Comparative Politics of Immigration Policy(Routledge, 2020) is an excellent primer for those looking to understand the complexities of immigration not only as a policy arena, but the study of immigration and migration, and to get a sense of the different approaches to immigration from a variety of kinds of countries. Terri Givens, Rachel Navarre, and Pete Mohanty have written a sophisticated and accessible text that would be of interest to anyone who wants to learn a bit more about immigration. The authors explain the different approaches to immigration taken by different countries, depending on the historical and political contexts of those countries. They group countries together into categories, with defining characteristics that contribute to the form and shape of the immigration policies that have been implemented. Attention is paid to the post-World War II European shifts in immigration and policies that provided avenues for workers to help with the rebuilding of places like Germany and France. There is also a discussion of the way that globalization has contributed to the evolution of immigration processes, and how migration is also participating in the shape of newer policies and political responses. In our conversation, Givens explains the way that sovereignty and nation building provide the framing for immigration policies and how nations think about those whom they allow to become citizens.
Immigration in the 21st Century provides an understanding of immigration from a practical perspective, contextualizing it in the world that came out of World War II. This book also integrates the role that the Cold War played in both immigration and migration during the period of tension between the East and the West, and then what happened after the end of the Cold War. In our conversation, Givens notes the differences between immigration, which is generally a public and political policy that a nation puts into place, and migration, which follows the flow of people from one place to another place, often because of a triggering event, like war and conflict, or climate change. We also discuss the different policies that govern the trade of goods across borders and the more complicated nature of implementing policies that govern the movement of people across borders. Immigration in the 21st Century is a useful and thoughtful analysis of the complexities of immigration in the modern world.
Terri Givens also has a website devoted to the book itself and updating information about immigration. Here is the link to that website, which also includes a coupon for a discount on the book: https://www.terrigivens.com/immigration/
In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i(Duke University Press, 2021), Candace Fujikane draws upon Hawaiian stories about the land and water and their impact upon Native Hawai'ian struggles to argue that Native economies of abundance provide a foundation for collective work against climate change.
Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital's fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing "wastelands" claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Māui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical-industrial complexes. As Kānaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.
Through discussion of his famous 1970s experiment alongside new research, in Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can(Columbia University Press, 2019), Herbert Terrace argues that, despite the failure of famous attempts to teach primates to speak, from these efforts we can learn something important: the missing link between non-linguistic and linguistic creatures is the ability to use words, not to form sentences. Situating language-learning as a capacity gained through conversation, not primarily representing internal thought, Terrace takes naming as the first step towards language. By drawing on research in developmental psychology, paleoanthropology, and linguistics, Terrace builds a case for understanding human language as grounded in social interaction between mother and child, rather than an inevitable, asocial result of a person’s development.
In 2013, when the state of Oklahoma erected a statue of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a group calling themselves The Satanic Temple applied to erect a statue of Baphomet alongside the Judeo-Christian tablets. Since that time, The Satanic Temple has become a regular voice in national conversations about religious freedom, disestablishment, and government overreach. In addition to petitioning for Baphomet to appear alongside another monument of the Ten Commandments in Arkansas, the group has launched campaigns to include Satanic "nativity scenes" on government property in Florida, Michigan, and Indiana, offer Satanic prayers at a high school football game in Seattle, and create "After School Satan" programs in elementary schools that host Christian extracurricular programs. Since their 2012 founding, The Satanic Temple has established 19 chapters and now claims 100,000 supporters. Is this just a political group perpetuating a series of stunts? Or is it a sincere religious movement?
Joseph Laycock's new book, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion (Oxford University Press, 2020) is the first book-length study of The Satanic Temple. Laycock contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom. Though the group gained attention for its strategic deployment of outrage, it claims to have developed beyond politics into a genuine religious movement. Equal parts history and ethnography, Speak of the Devil is Laycock's attempt to take seriously The Satanic Temple's work to redefine religion, the nature of pluralism and religious tolerance, and what "religious freedom" means in America.
Joseph Laycock is an associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University. He has written several books on new religious movements and American religious history, including one on role playing games and the satanic panic. He is also a co-editor for the journal Nova Religio.
Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City.
Much has long been made of the bold legislative action that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt marshalled forward in his first 100 days in office in the midst of the Great Depression. To take stock of the Biden presidency, Lilly and Susan asked three thoughtful political scientists—Dr. Jonathan Bernstein (Bloomberg Media), Dr. Nadia E. Brown (Purdue University), and Dr. Jane Junn (University of Southern California) to interrogate the early days of the Biden Administration. They not only provided keen observations about the Executive Branch, but also about Congress and state governments. The lively discussion shifted quickly from the arbitrary marker of the first 100 days to what is necessary to move policy forward in the closely divided U.S. House and Senate, and what the legislative agenda may look like going forward. We chat about the apparent pause in the swift swirling of our politics—though we debate whether the new administration is a return to normalcy and if it is possible, post Trump, to return to normalcy. In this context, there was a discussion of competence, expertise, intelligence, rationality,
preparation, and integrity. We pay close attention to the political parties, with specific focus on the internal tensions in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Our guests also spend time framing the political landscape with an understanding of the role and place of news media and social media.
The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America--racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them--proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945–1970 (Anchor Books, 2021), Phillip Lopate assembles a dazzling array of famous writers, critics, sociologists, theologians, historians, activists, theorists, humorists, poets, and novelists. Here are writers like James Agee, E. B. White, A. J. Liebling, and Mary McCarthy, adroitly pivoting from the comic indignities of daily life to world peace, boxing, and restaurants in Paris. Here is Norman Mailer on Jackie Kennedy and Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita. Here is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," alongside Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and Flannery O'Connor's "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Here are Gore Vidal, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Joan Didion, and many more, in a treasury of brilliant writing that has stood the test of time.
Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast.
