The past is present
Fifty years after the 1976 Soweto Uprising, many of the questions raised by student resistance remain unresolved. Recent movements like #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall draw from broader historical struggles for liberation in South Africa.
Fifty years ago, Laverne & Shirley debuted as the first blue-collar "single-girl" sitcom. The series’ anniversary provides an opportunity to discuss its contribution to the genre and how it reflected a particular moment in American history.
Today’s activists know what those in the Black freedom movement knew: Jail, No Bail was a critique of not just bail, but of an entire system of unjust laws and courts. Then and now, activists understand that power concedes nothing–not desegregation, not pre-trial freedom—without a fight.
The United States must confront the truth about its history in classrooms and in public—parks, museums, and government websites.
Mayor Mamdani’s use of a Quran from Schomburg’s collection [...] embraces the Afro-diasporic history and identity that Arturo Schomburg strove to create through his archive-building and auto/biographical writing.
Iran’s late 2025 protests, triggered by economic collapse, were met with mass killing and an internet blackout that made casualty verification a central political struggle. This “politics of counting” is situated in a recurring post-1979 pattern rooted in the regime’s institutional dualism and coercive capacity.
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.
Clio and the Contemporary 