The Tyranny of the Map: Rethinking Redlining 

By Robert Gioielli Teaching the history of racism in America can be a difficult thing. Not because students deny it, but because it is something that is so ubiquitous, so all encompassing, that many (particularly white) students let the idea roll over and past them. They know racism existed in the past and people did […]

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Announcing the Winner of the Sixth Annual UHA/The Metropole Grad Student Blogging Contest

Believing that blogging is an excellent way to teach beyond the classroom, market scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities, The Metropole established the Graduate Student Blogging Contest in 2017. This year, the theme of the contest was “The Senses,” which asked contributors to tell a story about any time, topic, person, or place […]

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The Second Story: Looking Up to Henry Binford

By Amanda I. Seligman Henry Binford’s most legendary urban tours are ones that he led on Chicago’s elevated trains, but he knows his way around the city by car too. Once while driving with a small group during my time in graduate school, Henry found his planned route blocked. Undeterred, he drove over a block […]

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Living in White Spaces: Suburbia’s Hidden Histories

By David S. Rotenstein In 2009 I learned about one African American woman who briefly lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, a Washington, DC, suburb. She worked for a white physician’s family. Lucille Walker’s story as a Black domestic worker survives in bits and pieces in the memory of the physician’s daughter, Ann Scandiffio. In 1939 […]

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Once Upon a Time in Istanbul: The City of Melancholia as Remembered by Orhan Pamuk

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This is the fifth entry in the series. You can read additional entries, as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. By Nefise Kahraman Istanbul, that cosmopolitan city of empires, featured in the itineraries of many travelers, an exoticized setting for […]

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Istanbul Under Allied Occupation: Venues of Resistance

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This the third entry in the series. You can read additional entries as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. By Evren Altinkas Ever since the ideals of nationalism, democracy, and freedom spread from Europe to the Ottoman world, Istanbul has […]

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Counterinsurgency and Insurgent Safety in Istanbul

Editor’s note: This is the second post in The Metropole’s theme month on Istanbul. You can see additional posts in the series at the bottom of the page. By Deniz Yonucu                                                                        The Black Lives Matter Movement was not only successful in drawing large-scale attention to police violence enabled by deeply embedded racism both in the […]

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City of Empire: An Overview and Bibliography of Istanbul

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This overview is the first entry for the month, you can read additional entries in this series, as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. I’ve only been to Istanbul once in my life, during the summer of 2003, just before […]

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