The past is present
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Like many Vietnam War-era films, Taxi Driver contains historical truths but also reinforces deeply problematic myths about veterans, homecoming, and trauma.
Federal immigration violence against Minnesotans in January 2026 echoes the historic federal violence committed against Minnesota’s Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century.
In honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, it is both appropriate—and overdue—to discuss the significance of Coretta Scott King. When Coretta declared, “I was called, too,” she insisted we remember her not as a shadow of her husband, but as an equal.
While the history of Cold War intervention rightly shapes international responses to Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping, the emphases of US policymakers today are more in line with those of the early 20th century, especially the aftermath of Cuban independence from Spain and President Wilson’s occupation of Haiti.
Fifty years ago the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm. But more than the “gales of November” wrecked the Fitz. The ship was also the casualty of a globalizing neoliberal order which wrecked the American industrial economy.
At the 50th anniversary of the fight, the “Thrilla in Manila” emerges as not only the story of two extraordinary boxers’ pushing themselves to their physical limits, but also embodies creativity and entrepreneurship within the African American community, as well as a climactic event in the history of American sports in the 1970s.
Recent attacks on Tom Hanks and American universities highlight parallels between 2025 and the McCarthy era. But our moment has something the Cold War Red Scare didn't: the benefits of hindsight and mass resistance.
"Meeting Across the River" routinely lands last when fans rank their Born to Run favorites. But its noir mood was where the country was heading in the mid-1970s.
As the Trump administration calls for the return of domestic manufacturing, there is one industry that managed to resist the outsourcing process of the late 20th century. It only required the destruction of its labor unions.
In 1995, Democrats held up a Big Bird doll to laud the importance of children’s television and save public broadcast funding. This strategy does not seem likely to work in 2025.
Clio and the Contemporary 