The pandemic, the Muslim bans, the US-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen, counterterrorism initiatives – Yemeni Americans have faced, and continue to confront, major challenges to their well-being and their ability to connect with loved ones in Yemen. Sunaina Maira’s recent ethnographic work focuses on Oakland-based Yemeni corner store owners and their families. (Encore presentation.) Nadia Kim … Continued


Can classic organizing methods be effective in gig economy workplaces? Paul C. Gray examines how methods like organizing conversations, social mapping, social charting, leader identification, and the identification of strategic chokepoints were applied by food couriers in Toronto to the peculiar circumstances of their platform-based work environment. (Encore presentation.) Labour/Le Travail Gig Workers United (Photo on … Continued


In many immigration holding facilities, detainees can choose to work for wages. But is the language of choice in this context misleading? Katie Bales deploys the concept of unfree labor to explain what’s going on within what she calls the immigration industrial complex. She emphasizes the historical and geopolitical factors that compel many detainees to agree … Continued


Mike Davis was an exceptional thinker and writer: a deeply committed socialist who dazzlingly illuminated the unfolding ecological and social contradictions of late capitalism. Whether writing about his native Southern California, or contemplating the fate of billions in the world’s mega-slums, Davis gave us new ways of seeing — always with a post-capitalist world in … Continued


How did the influential scholar Cedric Robinson understand black radicalism and global capitalism? Yousuf Al-Bulushi has written about what he sees as several constituent elements of the Robinsonian black radical tradition, including an appreciation of culture (which pushes back against Marxism’s materialism) and a critique of state-based models of self-determination. Al-Bulushi also considers Robinson’s engagement … Continued


Gene-guided healthcare has taken U.S. medicine by storm, promising precision, targeted treatments to myriad illnesses. It has also proved very profitable. James Tabery traces how genetic medicine vied within the federal government with another approach to healthcare — one emphasizing the social and environmental determinants of health, such as whether you live in a polluted … Continued


Ours is an era of breathless talk about innovation, technical change, and disruption –- all for the presumed greater good. But what if the focus on relentless innovation has obscured the more important work of maintenance and care? Historian Lee Vinsel discusses the trajectory of technical innovation and its valorization, as well as the devaluing … Continued


What role do historians, and the discipline of history itself, play in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of … Continued