Departments

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social reform

  • SOURCE: Aeon
    9/6/2022

    Ken Burns Got "Prohibition" Wrong

    by Mark Lawrence Schrad

    Burns largely accepts an individualistic and libertarian narrative of prohibition as a misbegotten campaign of moral scolds, missing the reformist, egalitarian, and humane demands of the movement and the exploitative nature of the "liquor traffic" it sought to disrupt. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/25/2022

    Antiabortion Movement Gunning for Contraceptive Rights, Too

    by Anya Jabour

    A century ago, sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis was silenced because she fought to redefine women's sexuality and contraceptive use as normal and fight for its decriminalization. The right today wants to undo her legacy through the courts.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/1/2022

    The Truth About Prohibition

    by Mark Lawrence Schrad

    American historians have often identified Prohibition with a coalition of social reformers, nativists and religious fundamentalists. Looking at the international temperance and prohibition movement tells a different story of a fight against exploitation of workers and minority groups through addiction.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    6/15/2021

    How to Think Like a Utopian

    The Dutch macrohistorian says that utopian thinking – that doesn't accept the present as necessary or permanent – is very different from fatalism because it ideally spurs action. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    6/10/2020

    The Template for Using White Privilege to Fight Racism

    by Nancy C. Unger

    Whiteness enables allies in this struggle to push in ways that African Americans sometimes cannot without disproportionate risk. That was Belle La Follette’s secret — she used white privilege to fight against it.