The Connection Between Harry Whyte’s Letter to Stalin and Homoerotic Soviet Propaganda 

In a now famous 1934 letter to the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, Scottish communist Harry Whyte argued for the inclusion of homosexual people within the Communist Party and communism as an institution in the USSR. Whyte makes a variety of arguments throughout the letter for the inclusion of homosexual people within the Communist Party, many […]

Les Camisards: Child Prophecy in “A Cry from the Desart” and “Le Theatre Sacre”

When the Camisards fled to England, their Protestant ally, they attracted a lot of attention, especially as they began to convert English Dissenters from the middling and upper classes, who adopted their sensational practices. Some of the new English converts were very well connected, such as Justice of the Peace, John Lacy, and there is […]

Battles for German Victimhood in “Die Mörder sind unter uns”

The German film industry was an integral part of the Third Reich’s propaganda machine. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Veit Harlan’s Jud Süß often come to mind when describing this era of fascist film. What, then, did occupying authorities do with this multimillion Reichsmark industry after Germany’s unconditional surrender? The short answer is […]

Famine, Social Disorder, and the Writing Down of Buddhist Scripture: Did the Eruption of Alaska’s Okmok Volcano affect Indian Civilization in the first century BCE?

Editor’s Note: This week, we are delighted to feature a guest post written by Jamie Flynn, a graduate student at Yale University! The research I would like to showcase in this blog post is an interdisciplinary project building on a paper recently published by one of my professors at Yale, Joseph Manning. I am spending […]

How Irish Women Remember the Revolution: Gendered Constructions of Memory in Personal Narratives

As Ireland celebrates the Decade of Centenaries, ten years of events commemorating the Irish Revolution, some commentators have noted a curious phenomena in the representation of women. Despite the increased attention to women’s involvement in the revolution, the women remembered were considered “exceptional” or as existing apart from revolutionary men. The noted scholar Oona Frawley […]

Language and Liturgy: The Relationship between Religion and the Irish

Celtic languages have declined significantly in the last millennium despite once dominating the British Isles. The Irish language especially has diminished significantly despite once covering the whole of Ireland. Many scholars have attributed this decline to political, economic, and social factors, but the role of religion remains underexplored. The 16th through 18th centuries in particular […]