COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity disease. Even as politicians, managers, and UN officials give us pep talks about how we’re all in this together, segments of our society are having vastly different experiences of this pandemic.
History at Large
The Memory Map of the Jewish East End
A new digital resource allowing users to explore former sites of Jewish memory in East London went online this week. On it you will find audio interviews, photographs, and essays about more than 70 sites (we hope to include more in future) that consistently appear in people’s recollections of Jewish East London. The memory map aims to create a lasting document of both the history and memory traces of the Jewish East End and attempts to bring the stories and memories of this rapidly vanishing landscape to new audiences.
The Slippery History of the Dental Dam
As an object, the dental dam awkwardly straddles the history of AIDS activism and queer sexuality, acting as an assertion that sex doesn’t require the presence of a penis to be real sex, while acknowledging simultaneously that such sex still carries risks. The dental dam was deployed as an object for sexual use in an attempt to abate the risk of HIV transmission, but its questionable efficacy as a barrier against the virus has reduced it, for some at least, to a latex relic of historical fears.
Walking as radical history on the East End Women’s Museum Trail
What does the heritage trail format offer to the communication of radical histories? Charlotte Tomlinson introduces the East End Women’s Museum’s (EEWM) Brilliant Women of Whitechapel, Bow and Barking Heritage Trail, which explores stories of ‘ordinary yet extraordinary’ women who have lived in East London.
Picket Line Perspectives: another university seems possible
On day 7 of the 8-day UCU strike action over pay, pensions, and poor working conditions, Grace Redhead and Matt Griffin discuss precarity, inequality, outsourcing, and picket line solidarity at UCL
Food Walking and the Itineraries of Radical History
Charlie Taverner reflects on how historical food walks can enrich radical history by opening new up trajectories and generating unexpected perspectives on the experience of the pre-industrial city.
A brief history of anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka
Delving into Sri Lanka’s colonial past, Shamara Wettimuny shows how the ‘Easter attacks’, or recent anti-Muslim violence has its roots in the ethno-nationalistic paradigm of the island.
