History Talk

Conflict has defined Arab-Israeli relationships for many decades, with the interstate warfare of the 1940s-1980s giving way in the 1990s and after to a roiling confrontation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people of the Israeli-occupied territories.

Since the 1940s, the United States has striven to contain, manage, or resolve the conflict, with some notable successes and numerous pronounced failures. While not without precedent, the crisis that erupted in early October 2023 marks an especially difficult, deadly and portentous phase of conflict, and thus poses acute policy dilemmas for U.S. officials who seek to achieve stability and peace in the region.

In this webinar, Professor Peter L. Hahn analyzes the complicated situation in Gaza in its historical and contemporary contexts, focusing on the American role and aiming to bring clarity and balanced perspective about this difficult and dangerous moment in the Middle East.

The rural roads that led to our planet-changing global economy ran through the American South. Acclaimed scholar Bart Elmore explores that region's impact on the interconnected histories of business and ecological change. He uses the histories of five southern firms—Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx and Bank of America—to investigate the environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit global economy.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with company executives, corporate archives and other records, Elmore explores the historical, economic, and ecological conditions that gave rise to these five trailblazing corporations. He then considers what each has become: an essential presence in the daily workings of the global economy and an unmistakable contributor to the reshaping of the world's ecosystems. Even as businesses invest in sustainability initiatives and respond to new calls for corporate responsibility, Elmore shows the limits of their efforts to “green” their operations and offers insights on how governments and activists can push corporations to do better.

Bart Elmore is Professor of Environmental History and Core Faculty, Sustainability Institute, The Ohio State University.

Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), is Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University.

On August 4, 1983, Captain Thomas Sankara led a coalition of radical military officers, communist activists, labor leaders, and militant students to overtake the government of the Republic of Upper Volta. Almost immediately following the coup’s success, the small West African country—renamed Burkina Faso, or Land of the Dignified People—gained international attention as it charted a new path toward social, economic, cultural, and political development based on its people’s needs rather than external pressures and Cold War politics. Join James E. Genova as he recounts in detail the revolutionary government’s rise and fall, demonstrating how it embodied the critical transition period in modern African history between the era of decolonization and the dawning of neoliberal capitalism. He will uncover one of the revolution’s most enduring and significant aspects: its promotion of film as a vehicle for raising the people’s consciousness, inspiring their efforts at social transformation, and articulating a new self-generated image of Africa and Africans. The talk is based on Genova’s new book Making New People: Politics, Cinema, and Liberation in Burkina Faso, 1983–1987 and spotlights the revolution’s lasting influence throughout Africa and the world.

Speaker: James E. Genova, Professor of History, The Ohio State University

Moderator: Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley talks about his new book, "Silent Spring Revolution," which chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  

With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities.  

In "Silent Spring Revolution," Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight.  

Carson’s book "Silent Spring," published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK’s Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day.  

With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written "Silent Spring Revolution" reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to commemorate the Second World War. Even though the war ended over 77 years ago, Putin has made World War II memory central to contemporary Russian national identity.  This talk will explore how war remembrance serves Putin’s interests, including with regard to his war in Ukraine.  

Panelists:  David L. Hoffmann, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University  and Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University  

This talk is a presentation by the Clio Society in the Ohio State University Department of History.

The United States was a nation forged in the ideological fires of a democratic revolution to overturn monarchy and imperial control. Yet many American leaders and citizens ever since have denied or rejected a foreign policy guided by ideology.

Why? If ideas and ideologies help us to order and explain the world, often serving as rationales for (in)action as well as explanations for success or failure, how does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? In short, how has and does ideology drive U.S foreign relations?

Panelists:

As the hazards of carbon emissions increase and governments around the world seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the search for clean and affordable alternate energies has become an increasing priority in the twenty-first century. However, one nation has already been producing such a fuel for almost a century: Brazil. Its sugarcane-based ethanol is the most efficient biofuel on the global fuel market, and the South American nation is the largest biofuel exporter in the world.

Ohio State University History Professor David Hoffmann examines some key moments in recent Russian and Ukrainian history, with particular attention to the breakup of the Soviet Union, Putin’s rise to power in Russia, and the 2014 Revolution in Ukraine. 

Speaker | David L. Hoffmann, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History. Professor Hoffmann is a specialist in Russian and Soviet history, with a particular focus on the political, social, and cultural history of Stalinism.  

Moderator | Angela Brintlinger, Professor and Interim Department Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies' "Understanding the War in Ukraine: Weekly Wednesday Speaker Series."

Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

Bart Elmore takes us on an authoritative and eye-opening journey into how the company Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018―but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. Elmore examines Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products―including PCBs and Agent Orange―to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology.

Bart Elmore is Associate Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University.

Learn about an exciting new collaboration that marries photographs and words to bring Black history to life. Picturing Black History (https://www.picturingblackhistory.org/) is a collaborative project between Getty Images and Ohio State’s Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective (http://origins.osu.edu) that contributes to the ongoing public dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life. The project embraces the power of images to capture stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the globe.

To view the photographs in this podcast, please view the video version which is available at https://youtu.be/L2rfMgk6Abg.

Participants:

- Bob Ahern | Director of Archive Photography for Getty Images

- Dawn Chitty, (Ed.D.) | Director of Education at the African American Civil War Museum

- Daniela Edmeier (Moderator) | Ph.D. Candidate History, Ohio State, and Managing Editor of Picturing Black History

- Damarius Johnson | Ph.D. student History, Ohio State, and Associate Editor of Picturing Black History

- James Morgan | Programming Consultant with the African American Civil War Museum

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been described as a “a crime against peace” and “Europe’s Darkest Hour” since World War II. It is an attack that is sure to restructure the international order along with the lives of all Ukrainian citizens. Our panelists assist us in understanding these tragic and world-changing events.

This webinar addresses the following questions:

Why has Russia invaded and why now?

How have Ukrainians responded to the threat of war and to the pressures from Russia over the years?

What role does Russian and Ukrainian nationalism play in this crisis?

What are long-term patterns of Russian-Ukrainian relations?
What should the rest of the world do in the world do in the face of this crisis?

Panelists:

· Angela Brintlinger (Moderator), Director, Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, The Ohio State University

· Shawn Conroy, PhD Candidate, History, The Ohio State University

· Marianna Klochko, Associate Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University

· Philip Kopatz, Graduate Student, Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, The Ohio State University

· Myroslava Mudrak, Professor Emeritus, Department of History of Art, The Ohio State University

· Mykyta Tyshchenko, Graduate Student, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University

In 2006 a small group of historians startled the world by announcing the discovery and publication of a Gospel of Judas. Could the disciple who betrayed Jesus be a hero? Sixteen years later we can see the true significance of this strange text, which reveals to us the amazing diversity of Christianity only one hundred years after Jesus.

A presentation by David Brakke, Professor and Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity at The Ohio State University. Moderated by Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at The Ohio State University. Hosted by the Department of History Clio Society and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.

Our panel of historians reevaluates what we think we know about the War on Drugs.

When and where did it really begin?
Why has it persisted?
And perhaps most importantly, will we ever be able to quit?

They uncover how the centuries-long history of global drug prohibition prologues today's discussions of drug use, abuse, and legalization.

Panel:

• Dr. Isaac Peter Campos, Associate Professor of History, University of Cincinnati
• Brionna Mendoza, Doctoral candidate in History, Ohio State University
• Dr. Sarah Brady Siff, Drug Enforcement & Policy Center, Moritz College of Law; Ohio State University
• Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, Ohio State University

China has expanded its global presence over the last decade much to the concern of U.S. officials. Africa is a major recipient of this new influence, building on Cold War relationships first forged during an earlier era of Sino-American competition. Yet looking at Chinese engagement in Africa over the last 50 years reveals that increased power has transformed Beijing’s foreign policies and strained its global relationships.

Panel:
Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator) | Associate Professor, Department of History
Patrick Nash | Graduate Student, Department of History
Joe Parrott | Assistant Professor, Department of History

This podcast was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center, the Goldberg Center for Teaching Excellence in the History Department, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Bexley Public Library.

The issues of race and racism remain as urgent as ever to our national conversation. Four scholars discuss such questions as: Since Race does not exist as a biological reality, what then is race and where did the idea develop from? What is racism? How have race and racism been used by societies to justify discrimination, oppression, and social exclusion? How did racism manifest in different national and historical contexts? How have American and World history in the modern eras been defined by ideas of race and the power hierarchies embedded in racism?

Panel:
-Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center, The Ohio State University
-Alice Conklin | Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University
-Robin Judd | Associate Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University
-Hasan Jeffries | Associate Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University
-Deondre Smiles | Ph.D. Geography '20; Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In this talk about her new book, Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic. Across the political spectrum, people insisted that regulating reproduction was necessary and that limiting the population was essential to economic development. This podcast investigates the often devastating implications of this logic, which demonized some women’s reproduction as the cause of national and planetary catastrophe.  

To tell this story, Prof. Mytheli Sreenivas explores debates about marriage, family, and contraception. She also demonstrates how concerns about reproduction surfaced within a range of political questions about poverty and crises of subsistence, migration and claims of national sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for economic development.  

Mytheli Sreenivas is an Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Host Nicholas Breyfogle is Co-Editor of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, Director of the Harvey Goldberg Center and Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University.  

This podcast is brought to you by the Clio Society of the Ohio State History Department, in partnership with the Bexley Public Library and the magazine Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.  

Be sure to subscribe to this channel to receive updates about our podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.  We thank the Stanton Foundation for their funding of this and other Origins projects. http://thestantonfoundation.org/ Follow us on Twitter: @HistoryTalkPod, @ProloguedPod and @OriginsOSU, Facebook: @Origins OSU and Tumblr: at osuorigins.tumblr.com.

The story of Israel's foundation has often been told from the perspective of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. In this presentation, Ori Yehudai turns this historical narrative on its head, focusing on Jewish out-migration from Palestine and Israel between 1945 and the late 1950s. Based on previously unexamined primary sources collected from twenty-two archives in six countries, he will talk about how, despite the dominant view that displaced Jews should settle in the Jewish homeland, many Jews instead saw the country as a site of displacement or a way-station to more desirable lands. Covering events in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, Yehudai provides a fresh transnational perspective on the critical period surrounding the birth of Israel and the post-Holocaust reconstruction of the Jewish world.

Ori Yehudai is the Schottenstein Chair in Israel Studies and Assistant Professor in the Ohio State University Department of History.

We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point?  Join Ohio State History Professor Chris Otter as he takes us back over the last 200 years to explore how we developed our current diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar. He’ll explore how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply.  

Panelists:
-Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center
-Chris Otter | Professor, Department of History  

Faculty experts from the Ohio State University Department of History hold a conversation about the first one hundred days of the Biden administration.

Panelists:

• Maysan Haydar, Lecturer and Graduate Student, Department of History
• Treva Lindsey, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Peter Mansoor, Professor and General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair in Military History, Department of History
• Margaret Newell, Professor, Department of History
• Joseph Parrott, Assistant Professor, Department of History

Eminent environmental historians from the Ohio State University Department of History share how environmental history informs our shared future in a world confronted by pandemics, climate change, droughts and floods, unstable food supplies, changing energy needs, and the threats of pollutants and toxins.

Panelists:

-Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center
-Kip Curtis, Associate Professor, Department of History
-Jennifer Eaglin, Assistant Professor, Department of History
-Bart Elmore, Associate Professor, Department of History

This is a production of the College of Arts & Sciences and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

We thank the Stanton Foundation for their funding of this and other Origins projects. http://thestantonfoundation.org/

Follow us on Twitter: @HistoryTalkPod, @ProloguedPod and @OriginsOSU, Facebook: @Origins OSU and Tumblr: at osuorigins.tumblr.com.

The real origins of the iPhone’s power stems from the pioneering efforts of communication innovators that preceded the AT&T engineers of the 1920s. The story of wired long-distance communication really begins with the Western Union post-diggers who laid the first American transcontinental telegraph in 1861 and the Atlantic Telegraph Company that dropped the first transatlantic telegraph cable into the Atlantic Ocean in 1858. Listen to this podcast to learn more about the history of the telephone.  

Shannon Gonzales-Miller, PhD, shares her dissertation research project that sought to examine the experiences of identity erasure, invisibility and hyper visibility for Urban Indian, graduate students who attended an historically and predominately white public university. She considers how prevailing, monolithic descriptions of Native students influences the classroom experiences of non-Reservation Native students.

The medieval church gave birth to the misogynistic rhetoric that continues to hinder women’s progress in the West today, but it also witnessed the first real “feminist” rumblings of discontent.

Medieval women were not content to be victims of oppression: they challenged the rhetoric, and when that didn’t work, they found ways to work around it. In this podcast, historian Sara Butler speaks about women in the Middle Ages and how they faced many of the same challenges that we do today. Sara Butler is a Professor and the King George III Chair in British History at The Ohio State University Department of History.

This presentation is an Indigenous autoethnographic study of a family’s story of survival through the Native American boarding school system. Although this project was in a part an academic exercise, it was also an effort to reclaim pieces of a family’s experience that was purposefully silenced and erased from mainstream hegemonic nationalist narratives. 

Speaker: Melissa Beard Jacob, PhD | Intercultural Specialist, Native American and Indigenous Student Initiatives, Office of Student Life Multicultural Center | The Ohio State University

This podcast is presented in partnership with Ohio State Newark Earthworks Center, American Indian Studies, and the Ohio State University Department of History.

On World AIDS Day 2020, in the midst of another pandemic, Ohio State University History Professor Thomas McDow presented a close look at the historical factors that shaped the global spread of HIV, from equatorial Africa to the world.

Thomas F. McDow is a specialist in African History at Ohio State University. He co-teaches a course with a microbiologist on the global history and science of HIV and is writing a history of HIV in Tanzania.

Posted: December 4, 2020

Ohio State University Department of History faculty experts discuss the historical context of Election 2020. Panelists include: Paula Baker, Associate Professor, Department of History; Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History and Director of the Goldberg Center; Susan Hartman, Professor Emerita, Department of History; Clay Howard, Associate Professor, Department of History; and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor, Department of History

Posted: December 1, 2020

Ohio State University experts Melissa Beard Jacob, Ph.D., and Associate Professor Daniel Rivers discuss Indigenous Peoples' Day and the history of Indigenous People. Dr. Jacob is the Intercultural Specialist for Native American and indigenous Students and Dr. Rivers is a faculty member in the Department of History.

Posted: October 14, 2020

A conversation with Ohio State University Department of History faculty members, John Brooke, Jennifer Eaglin and Samuel White about the historical context of climate change.

Posted: September 29, 2020

On the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences hosted a conversation with a panel of experts. They discussed the legacy of enfranchisement, especially for women of color; the ongoing gender disparity in elected officials; and how history informs the 2020 election. Panelists included: Susan Hartmann, professor emerita, Department of History; Treva Lindsey, associate professor, Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Sarah Paxton, JD; PhD candidate, Department of History; Producer, Prologued podcast; and Leticia Wiggins, PhD, Department of History; Multimedia Producer, WOSU Public Media.

Posted: August 2020

From Mao Zedong to Martin Luther King Jr., China has a long and complex history of interaction with African American movements for equal rights. Please join Ohio State University’s Melvin Barnes Jr. and Princeton University’s James Watson-Krips as they discuss Barnes’ research on the history of Chinese-African American interactions from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter.

Posted: July 2020

From Plague to Influenza and HIV, learn about the history of global pandemics in order to better understand the current coronavirus pandemic, a panel discussion with John Brooke, Jim Harris, Thomas McDow, Erin Moore, and Kristina Sessa.

Posted: May 2020

In early June 2019, residents of Hong Kong took to the streets to protest proposed legislation by the Hong Kong government that would enable extradition from the city to mainland China. Over the ensuing months, heavy-handed tactics by the police only swelled the movement, which has grown to involve over a million residents of Hong Kong. The demonstrators' demands have also expanded to encompass an investigation into police brutality, the resignation of Chief Executive Carrie Lam and the establishment of free democratic elections in the city.

Voting is perhaps the most fundamental act of democratic citizenship. In a democracy, our political leaders receive their mandate, and the system itself derives its legitimacy, from the people who elect them. In the United States, however, the right to vote has never been extended universally. Although the franchise has expanded to include many more citizens since 1776, these gains have come haltingly and unevenly. Even as women gained suffrage, African Americans were kept from the polls in many parts of the country for decades. And elected officials have long meddled with district boundaries to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (a.k.a.AMLO) rode to the presidency in 2018 by promising Mexico "juntos haremos historia" ("together we will make history"). Pundits have fallen over themselves trying to categorize AMLO, refering to him variously as Mexico's Jeremy Corbyn and Mexico's Donald Trump. AMLO's keen sense of his country's history has found expression in his promise to inaugurate the country's "fourth transformation." In doing so, he has positioned himself squarely in the pantheon of Mexican reformers. The phrase is a reference to the march of Mexican politics towards social democracy (after independence in 1810, the liberal reforms of the 1850s, and the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s).

In April 2019, four months of sustained protests throughout Sudan culminated in the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country since taking office in a 1989 military coup. Originally a response to the spiraling cost of living, demonstrators soon widened their criticisms to encompass the full impact of Bashir’s three decades in power: brutal political repression, economic stagnation, and civil war in the country’s west and south. In the end, the huge crowds who took to the streets of Khartoum and other cities (including a significant proportion of women) crystallized their demands in a simple chant, directed at Bashir: “Just fall — that’s all.”

International observers have suggested that the uprising in Sudan represents a second “Arab Spring.” Yet perhaps more important is the long history of popular protest within Sudan, which have twice in the past toppled autocratic governments. As protestors continue to defy the military government and demand the establishment of civilian rule, understanding Sudan’s past is key to any attempt to predict its future.

After more than four years of war, Yemen teeters on the brink of what the European Union has described as “the world's largest humanitarian crisis.” Conservative estimates count at least 10,000 civilian deaths in the ongoing conflict, with millions more threatened by disease and famine. Yet for many in the West, Yemen remains a forgotten war, despite the fact that the Saudi-backed forces fighting the northern Houthi rebels continue to deploy weapons produced in the United States and in Europe with devastating effect.

On June 23rd, 2016, 52% of voters in the United Kingdom stunned the British political and media establishment—and the entire world—by voting to leave the European Union. Nearly three years, later, however, the final outcome of Brexit remains uncertain. And issues that affect the lives of millions hang in the balance, from the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and Britons living in the EU, to the status of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Over the last two decades, the Catholic Church has been buffeted by a series of sexual abuse scandals. High-profile investigative reports have uncovered cases of sexual abuse of minors, both boys and girls, as well as nuns and adult women, by Catholic priests, bishops, and members of religious orders. But while clerical abuse has only recently become a news item, it has a much longer history.

In November 2018, a report commissioned by French President Emannuel Macron called for artifacts taken to France during the heyday of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to be returned to Africa, sending shockwaves throughout the museum world. “I cannot accept,” said Macron, “that a large part of the cultural heritage of several African countries is in France.” The expropriation of material culture has proven controversial in a variety of contexts, from the acquisition of Native American remains by American museums to the complicated provenance of Greek and Roman antiquities held by such major art institutions as the Getty Villa in Los Angeles and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, debates about the rightful ownership of conquered cultural artifacts are almost as old as imperial conquest itself, as evidenced by Cicero’s 70 BCE denunciation of the Roman plundering of Greek temples in conquered Sicily.