Anacleto Palabay, a young Filipino domestic worker in Washington, D.C., was intent on returning home to the Philippines. His soon-to-be wife was waiting there for him and he was eager to build a life with her after making money while living in the United States. Palabay’s story was a common one among Filipina/o migrants to… Read more →
Tag: imperialism
Addressing the Language Gap: A Review of Marvels of Medicine: Literature and Scientific Enquiry in Early Colonial Spanish America
The year of reckoning with the twin pandemics of racism and COVID-19 increasingly reminds us to attend to the relationships between health status and narrative experiences – how, for example, art and artists can express and contextualize our understanding of health experiences and inequities. Yet current research shows us the linguistic and cultural gaps still… Read more →
Worcestershire Sauce and the Geographies of Empire
Had a Bloody Mary to drink at brunch? Ate a Caesar salad last week? Munched on deviled eggs at that party? All of these dishes, and many more, commonly are made with Worcestershire sauce. But behind this seemingly innocuous condiment is a much larger colonial history that touches on issues of authenticity, domestication, and Anglicization…. Read more →
“What Must That Sound Like?”: The Trauma of Family Separation
On June 22, 2018, US Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California’s 33rd District, stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand action regarding the children in “Tender Age” detention shelters as a result of the Trump Administration’s new immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the US/Mexican border. In… Read more →
Sex, Death, and Atole at the Royal Indian Hospital
Mexico City, 18th Century For the wounded, diseased, and ailing of Mexico City, just about anything was better than the Royal Indian Hospital. By the 18th century it had been around awhile. King Philip II had established the Indian Hospital in the 1560s in a haphazard attempt to demonstrate the Crown’s supposed “piety and love… Read more →
“Just Close Your Eyes and Chew!”: Spirulina, Modernization, and the “Lost” Crops of the Past
On February 20, 2017, the young nation of South Sudan declared that it was suffering famine in several regions of the country.1 It was the first of several nations, including Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, that have begun to suffer severe food scarcity this year, resulting in what is arguably the largest humanitarian crisis in decades…. Read more →