A recent book review I read began with the line “borderlands are back.” It’s certainly true that more and more historians have used borderland regions as the stage for some excellent work on the construction of national identities (or indifference to them) in recent years. J. Laurence Hare, Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, makes ... Show More
Jul 28
On Who Blew Up Nord Stream: A Conversation with Author Bojan Pancevski
The September, 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Germany was perhaps the greatest single act of sabotage in modern history. In The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions that Shook the World (Henry Holt, 2026), Bojan Pancevsk ... Show More
1 h
Jul 17
Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today" (Catapult, 2025)
The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today (Catapult, 2025) delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong. In The ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 16
Chad S. A. Gibbs "Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance" (U Wisconsin Press, 2026)
On August 2, 1943, prisoners at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, located in occupied Poland, launched an uprising against their captors, during which hundreds successfully escaped while guards killed as many in the process. In this groundbreaking work, Chad S.A. Gibbs draws ... Show More
1h 8m
Apr 2025
Chiara Calzana and Valentina Gamberi, "Haunting Ruins: Ethnographies of Ruination and Decay" (Berghahn Books, 2025)
In the contemporary world, ruins, rubble, and decaying material have become increasingly iconic landscapes. They can foster a more layered theory of time, change and memory. The seven ethnographic case studies in Haunting Ruins (Berghahn Books, 2025) trace human engagements with ... Show More
45m 19s
Aug 2016
Valerie Hansen on the Silk Road and Dunhuang
Through remarkable archaeological excavations, Valerie Hansen, author of "The Silk Road: A New History," pieces together the dynamic and complicated history of the Silk Road. Hansen discusses the impact of micro exchanges along these prolific trade routes, the cultural and histor ... Show More
49m 37s
Feb 2016
Erica Fox Brindley, “Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE-50 CE” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
Erica Fox Brindley‘s new book is a powerful study of the history of conceptions of ethnicity in early China that focuses on the Hua-xia and the peoples associated with its southern frontier (Yue/Viet). Informed by a careful accounting of extant textual, linguistic, and archaeolog ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2014
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014)
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock, Texas to Tokyo, India, and back again, Wo ... Show More
1h 9m
Jan 2022
David Leupold, "Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory" (Routledge, 2020)
Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory (Routledge, 2020) explores the complex relationship between competing national myths, imagined boundaries and local memories in the threefold-contested geography referred to as Eastern Turkey, W ... Show More
51m 21s
Aug 2019
Martin T. Fromm, "Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
With China’s northwestern and southern edges justifiably being sources of global attention at present, Martin Fromm’s Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China (Cambridge University Press, 2019) has much light to shed on how the country’s ruling Com ... Show More
1h 10m
Aug 2024
Lines on a map: borders that shaped world history
People have been drawing lines on maps as long as there have been maps to draw on – whether for political, geographical or sometimes completely arbitrary purposes. But, when it comes to borders, these simple marks have had an irrevocable impact on lives and identities through the ... Show More
33m 12s