War, reporting and the Tower of Babel

War, reporting and the Tower of Babel

Richard Chapman, executive producer of “Dateline-Saigon,” discusses the documentary, the dangers journalists faced during the early years of the Vietnam War, and lessons for contemporary reporters and readers.
When the conspiracy is real

When the conspiracy is real

Umbrella Man. Outside agitators. Agents provocateur. As protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd continue, conspiracy theories and “false flag” charges have flown fast and furious. But sometimes the conspiracy is real. In “F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature” (2015), William J. Maxwell, professor of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, details a decades-long harassment campaign waged against prominent African American writers and activists.
Explaining push to ‘defund police’

Explaining push to ‘defund police’

In the wake of national protests following the death of George Floyd, some activists are calling on cities to defund their police departments. But what does that mean exactly? Robert Motley, a PhD candidate in the Brown School and manager of the Race & Opportunity Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, explained it’s more of a reallocation of funds for public safety and health.
Uncontrollable Blackness

Uncontrollable Blackness

African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York

Early twentieth-century African American men in northern urban centers like New York faced economic isolation, segregation, a biased criminal justice system, and overt racial attacks by police and citizens. In this book, Douglas J. Flowe interrogates the meaning of crime and violence in the lives of these men, whose lawful conduct itself was often surveilled […]
The Great Leap Backward

The Great Leap Backward

Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years

It is now forty years after Mao Zedong’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, and more than fifty years since the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine. During this time, the collective memory of these events has been sanitized, reduced to a much-diluted version of what truly took place. Historical and sociological […]
The Anthropology of Islamic Law

The Anthropology of Islamic Law

Education, Ethics, and Legal Interpretation at Egypt's Al-Azhar

“The Anthropology of Islamic Law” shows how hermeneutic theory and practice theory can be brought together to analyze cultural, legal, and religious traditions. These ideas are developed through an analysis of the Islamic legal tradition, which examines both Islamic legal doctrine and religious education. The book combines anthropology and Islamist history, using ethnography and in-depth […]
Berg wins National Jewish Book Award

Berg wins National Jewish Book Award

Nancy Berg, professor of Hebrew language and literature in the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Arts & Sciences, has won a National Jewish Book Award for best anthology for the 2018 book “What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (and What It Means to Amer­i­cans).”
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