Stories about History from November, 2020
Newly-found vintage playing cards shine a light on post-war occupied Japan
The vintage playing cards feature what was arguably the most prominent figure of daily life in early post-war Japan: the American soldier.
From #BlackLivesMatter to #VidasNegrasImportam: Call to end colonial legacy of police brutality
"Police brutality is universal, white supremacy is global, and colonialism is not forgotten, which is why Black people every day, around the world, are being killed."
Can secularism be compatible with Islam?
"Islam has become an insecure identity that is always undermined by criticism from the Christian or godless, but always colonial, West."
During the Cold War, Latin American intellectuals found solace in communist Prague
After World War II, Latin America had authoritarian, US-backed anti-communist governments. Facing repression at home, writers found refuge in communist Prague, in a story little-known in today's Czech Republic.
Barbados removes statue of British naval officer Horatio Nelson for his role in the slave trade
"The point is not the destruction of ‘the past’, as if there was one monolithic uncontested past, but the renegotiation of which past the present holds up to its face."
The history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, the medieval Jewish book that survived the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the Yugoslav Wars
When Nazi Germany occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Haggadah was hidden at the mosque of a Muslim village in the Bjelašnica Mountain, where it remained until the end of the war.
In the heart of Europe, an endangered Turkic language lives on
The dwindling Karaim language was once spoken across eastern Europe. Now its last stronghold is a fortress town in Lithuania — and Romuald Čaprockij one of its most ardent defenders
