For the members of my inaugural class: the brilliant first-years of “Succession” When the film Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler, was released to that rare mix of critical and popular esteem in 2018, I knew I was supposed to like it—not just as a progressive but as a critic myself. Indeed, I did: it’s…
Tag: Race
Towards an Asian American Disability Politics: On Mimi Khúc’s “Dear Elia”
Sami Schalk, in Black Disability Politics (2022), notes “the limited scholarly work on the specific approaches to disability politics within particular racialized communities thus far” (162). Schalk explains that the lack of such scholarly work prevents her from exploring to what extent a Black disability politics overlaps with the disability politics of Indigenous and Native,…
“Venereal Peril”: ‘Controlled’ Prostitution and French Regulationism After 1945
Penicillin and the French regulationist system The advent of penicillin in the 1930s marked a significant breakthrough that revolutionized the therapeutic landscape for diverse bacterial infections, including those causing venereal diseases (Brandt, Jones 1999). The use of penicillin during World War Two led to a decline in the incidence of syphilis and allowed for more…
Representations and Discourses of Vietnamese and North African Women in French Colonial Postcards, Part II
Clothing in Postcards of Algerian and Moroccan Women In many ways, garments were a marker of disparity between Vietnamese and North African colonial portraiture. In Algeria and Morocco, postcards were often organized around the veiled—or rather, unveiled—woman, a theme central to Orientalist art and photography. Colonialist photographers, such as Jean Geiser, Rudolf Lehnert and Ernst…
Representations and Discourses of Indochinese and North African Women in French Colonial Postcards (1880s-1920s), Part I
In the opening of his influential book Orientalism, Edward Saïd exposed the dominance and hegemony of Western authors and artists in shaping and formulating the fundamental narratives about the ‘Orient’, emphasizing the binary and self-consolidating character of colonial discourse: A very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and…
“A Hallowed Institution”: The Bordel Militaire de Campagne (Mobile Field Brothels) and the Making of Military Prostitution in France Following World War One
Reflecting on the French system of military prostitution known as Bordels Militaires de Campagne (BMC, Mobile Field Brothels) during the First World War, Dr. Léon Bizard wrote in his memoirs (1925): It was a mêlée, a hard, dangerous, and disgusting business. Fifty, sixty, up to a hundred men of all colors and races to relieve…
Humanizing Black Patients
Misconceptions and Fallacies on Race and Medical Treatment The Health Humanities is the study of the intersection of health and humanistic disciplines (such as philosophy, religion, literature) fine arts, as well as social science research that gives insight to the human condition (such as history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.)* The Health Humanities use methods…
Book Review: Narrative Art and the Politics of Health
Steven Rhue // Narrative Art and the Politics of Health stands out as wonderful collection of essays that unites disparate stories of health and wellbeing entangled with in the politics of medicine and healing. Brooks and Blanchette have carefully organized this assortment of writings in three thematic divisions. Part 1 of the volume concerns institutional narratives that confront…
Already Quarantined: Yes, the “Spanish” Flu was Racist Too
Salvador Herrera // After the outbreak of racialized violence against Asian communities across the world, President Donald Trump, his staff, and supporters maintained that calling the COVID-19 disease “the Chinese virus” is harmless and has nothing to do with race.[1] Their willful ignorance attributes the phrase to the supposed source of the virus. However, the…
Attentional Avoidance: America’s “War” on COVID-19 and Narco-Terrorism
Salvador Herrera // In a White House press briefing on Wednesday, April 1st, 2020, the Trump administration and the Coronavirus Task Force announced their “enhanced counter-narcotics operations” under U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).[1] Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump explained that these measures would include a doubling of USSOUTHCOM’s capabilities to surveil, disrupt, and seize drugs shipped overseas from…