Social practices and contingencies always exceed the neoliberal models by which people currently try to contain
the inherent unpredictability of accomplishing social tasks with others, such as getting a job. Contradictions in
neoliberal logics emerge when people try to live according to neoliberal precepts, engaging with other social…[Read more]

In Along an African Border, anthropologist Sónia Silva examines how the Angolan refugees living in Zambia during the Angolan civil war used their divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. To many people, these baskets are capable of thinking, hearing, judging, and responding. They communicate by means of small articles drawn in…[Read more]

As cestas de adivinhação de Angola, da Zâmbia e da República Democrática do Congo tornaram-se mundialmente conhecidas pelo seu fascinante conteúdo: várias dezenas de peças imbuídas de simbolismo. Vidas em Jogo apresenta este simbolismo em acção. As cestas de adivinhação, transformadas em oráculos, são entendidas pelos seus utilizadores c…[Read more]

The statements of researchers on the topic of basket divination and the statements of basket diviners in northwest Zambia, Africa, do not fully agree. While researchers rightly stress the importance of observation, analysis and interpretation in basket divination, going so far as to describe diviners as scientists, they fail to recognize that…[Read more]

In this article, the author explores basket divination, a technique found in Zambia and neighboring countries, as a form of material religion. Mores specifically, the author shows that in basket divination the idea of objectivity (objective knowledge) is directly associated with the materiality of the oracle used for divining. In the Luvale…[Read more]

This chapter on witchcraft in northwest Zambia shows that forms of asking and giving may be deployed to suspend suspicion about the motives of others, even as they possess the potential to kill. When a woman asks a witch for a gift of salt to flavor her food, the witch feigns generosity but forces that woman to join the coven in recompense. In…[Read more]

Instead of asking what evil is, let us see where evil takes us. Based on many conversations on the topic of witchcraft in northwest Zambia, Africa—conversations in which witchcraft is presented from the perspective of the bewitched—the concept of evil takes us to a ghastly realm of destruction and transfiguration where the discourse of mor…[Read more]

Clark Ashton Smith—unlike the more famous H.P. Lovecraft—engaged with the medieval as a setting for his fiction. Lovecraft admired classical Roman civilization and the eighteenth century, but had little time for medieval themes. As Brantley Bryant has related, Lovecraft wrote contemptuously that the Middle Ages was a period that “snivel[ed] along…[Read more]

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano’s genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. The Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987) traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation…[Read more]

A family tale inspired the author to explore seemingly minor, but related details of the Saint-Domingue, French, and American Revolutions, including the population movements to and from the United States. “A Haitian Tale of Diasporas and Revolutions” is a documented historical and personal narrative through cultures and continents, as…[Read more]

In his 1846 history-from-below, Le Peuple, Michelet presents himself as the embodiment of the history of France in order to reach beyond the discursive and effect social change. Unlike in many of his other histories, where an allegory of the body is used in the service of an overarching national or political narrative, the body in Le Peuple is…[Read more]

This photoessay documents the 82nd Annual Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, which took place in Morgan City, Louisiana over Labor Day weekend in 2018. It contains photographs of the festival, including images of pageant queens, food vendors, and the Blessing of the Fleet. The essay documents the authors’ experience of the festival, and c…[Read more]

Plausibilität spielt in allen Wissenschaftskulturen eine gewichtige Rolle – ob implizit oder explizit. Auffällig ist jedoch, dass es keiner spezifisch geschulten Kompetenz oder der Vermittlung eigenständiger Fähigkeiten bedarf, um einen Sachverhalt als “plausibel” zu beurteilen, während bei verwandten Begriffen wie etwa “logisch” je nach den meth…[Read more]

This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal systems that preceded as well as informed legal discourse under colonialism. The Daghestani turn to…[Read more]

This chapter uses Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive to consider the ways that collaborative, public-facing digital humanities initiatives can conflict with institutional conventions and methods of evaluating academic labor. Collaborative work creates challenges as well as opportunities for its organizers and laborers. The particular…[Read more]

The Wellcome Library, in considering a project to digitise and transcribe recipe manuscripts using crowdsourcing technologies, commissioned this report from Ben Brumfield and Mia Ridge in Summer 2015. The report addresses issues specific to this project, and to the Wellcome Library’s digital infrastructure.

Es bien conocido que la Relación sumaria de la Historia verdadera del Rey Don Pedro (PhiloBiblon BETA Texid 3377) es una de las obras de mayor complejidad analítica en toda la literatura hispánica de finales de la Edad Media y comienzo del Renacimiento. No solo en lo que concierne a su laberíntico entramado ecdótico, del que se han ocupado inve…[Read more]

In this directed readings course, students will study the relationship between the discipline of history and computing tools through a combination of theoretical and hands-on activities. They will read and respond weekly to a number of print and digital materials. There are two objectives for this directed readings: to explore the methods of…[Read more]

O ensino de língua portuguesa tem mudado muito desde o final da década de 1990. Mas ainda há muito o que fazer. Principalmente pela necessidade levar os alunos a compreenderem que o estudo da língua é o estudo do mundo social, cultural, identitário, psicológico, acadêmico – entre tantos outros mundos – no qual estão inseridos. Muitas vezes isso é…[Read more]