Virtual Library

Transcending geographic and cultural lines, From Toussaint to Tupac is an ambitious collection of essays exploring black internationalism and its implications for a black consciousness. At its core, black internationalism is a struggle against oppression, whether manifested in slavery, colonialism, or racism. The ten essays in this volume offer a comprehensive overview of the global movements that define black internationalism, from its origins in the colonial period to the present. From Toussaint to Tupac focuses on three moments in global black history: the American and Haitian revolutions, the Garvey movement and the Communist International following World War I, and the Black Power movement of the late twentieth century. Contributors demonstrate how black internationalism emerged and influenced events in particular localities, how participants in the various struggles communicated across natural and man-made boundaries, and how the black international aided resistance on the local level, creating a collective consciousness. In sharp contrast to studies that confine Black Power to particular national locales, this volume demonstrates the global reach and resonance of the movement. The volume concludes with a discussion of hip hop, including its cultural and ideological antecedents in Black Power.

By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings and lay down universal basic entitlements. Exactly how and when did “rights” come to justify such measures? In On the Spirit of Rights, Dan Edelstein answers this question by examining the complex genealogy of the rights that regimes enshrined in the American and French Revolutions. With a lively attention to detail, he surveys a sprawling series of debates among rulers, jurists, philosophers, political reformers, writers, and others who were all engaged in laying the groundwork for our contemporary systems of constitutional governance. Every seemingly new claim about rights turns out to be a variation on a theme, as late medieval notions were subtly repeated and refined to yield the talk of “rights” we recognize today. From the Wars of Religion to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, On the Spirit of Rights is a sweeping tour through centuries of European intellectual history and an essential guide to our ways of thinking about human rights today.

Stirring the Pot of Haitian History is the first-ever translation of Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (1977), the earliest book written by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Challenging understandings of two centuries of Haitian history, Trouillot analyzes the pivotal role of formerly enslaved Haitian revolutionaries in the Revolution and War of Independence (1791–1804), a generation of people who became the founders of the modern Haitian state and advanced the vibrant culture that flourishes in Haiti. This book confronts Haiti's political culture and the racial mythologizing of historical figures such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint Louverture, Andre Rigaud, and Alexandre Petion. Trouillot examines the socio-economic and political contradictions and inequalities within the French colony of Saint-Domingue, traces the unraveling of the racist class system after 1790, and argues that Vodou and the Haitian Creole language provided the underlying cultural cohesion and resistance that led Haiti to independence.This groundbreaking book blends Marxist criticism with Haiti's rich oral storytelling traditions to provide a playful yet incisive account of Haitian political thought that is rooted in the style and culture of Haitian Creole speakers. Proverbs, wordplay, and songs from popular culture and Vodou religion are interspersed with explorations of complex social and political realities and historical hypotheses; readers are thus drawn into a captivating oral performance. 

In a nation where the Haitian Creole majority language is still marginalized in government and education, Ti dife boule leaps out as a major contribution in the effort to expand Haitian Creole scholarship. Stirring the Pot of Haitian History holds a significant place in the expanding canon of Caribbean literature. The English translation of Trouillot's first book—showing how historical problems continue to reverberate within the contemporary moment—provides readers with a one-of-a-kind Haitian perspective on Haitian revolutionary history and its legacies.This book received Honorable Mentions for both the Modern Languages Association's Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work and the Latin American Studies Association's Isis Duarte Book Prize.

Первое десятилетие ХX века стало временем самоопределения многих общественных сил и колоссального запроса на политические изменения, временем поиска будущего, многочисленных программных установок и формирования партийных организаций. Новая книга Кирилла Соловьева посвящена либеральной оппозиции в России накануне и во время Первой русской революции 1905 года. Речь идет о формах политического действия оппозиции в условиях самодержавия — причем той ее части, которая не была готова к прямому насилию и вместе с тем рассчитывала на итоговый успех. В 1905 году ее лидеры (Петр Струве, Евгений Трубецкой, Александр Кизеветтер, Екатерина Кускова, Николай Кареев, Михаил и Сергей Сабашниковы, Николай Гучков, Владимир Набоков, Владимир Вернадский и другие) чувствовали себя в числе победителей, внесших свою лепту в эволюцию политического режима. Кирилл Соловьев — доктор исторических наук, профессор Школы исторических наук Факультета гуманитарных НИУ «Высшая школа экономики», специалист по политической истории России XIX — начала XX веков.

1959年3月10日，拉薩數萬民眾包圍達賴喇嘛的夏宮羅布林卡，阻止他按照原定計劃前往西藏軍區司令部觀看文藝演出。隨後民眾集會遊行，喊出了要求解放軍撤出西藏，要求西藏獨立的口號。那天在拉薩發生的事，史稱「1959年拉薩事件」。事件導致未滿24歲的西藏政教領袖，時任全國人大常委會副委員長、西藏自治區籌委會主任的第十四世達賴喇嘛丹增嘉措率家人和噶廈政府部分主要官員，於17日深夜離開羅布林卡，經過兩周跋涉，翻越喜馬拉雅山，前往印度尋求政治庇護。

本書是以 細緻入微的研究以及公正的立場揭示「1959年拉薩事件」歷史真相的開創性作品。

On March 10th, 1959, tens of thousands of people surrounded Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace in Lhasa, preventing him from attending a prescheduled theater performance at the headquarters of the Tibetan Military Region. Soon afterwards, the people carried out a rally and demonstrations, shouting slogans calling for PLA withdrawal from Tibet and Tibetan independence. The events of that day later became known as the "1959 Lhasa Incident." The incident spurred the not yet twenty four-year-old Tibetan religious leader Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, co-chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, and director of the Tibet Autonomous Region Planning Committee to flee Norbulingka late at night on the 17th. After a two-week journey across the Himalayas, the Dalai Lama, his family members, and some Kashag government officials sought political asylum in India.

One of Africa's most renowned philosophers and political leaders, Kwame Nkrumah was not only at the center of what he called "the African revolution," but he also articulated its ideology. In this book he sets out his personal philosophy, which he terms "consciencism," and which has provided the intellectual framework for his political action.

The Green Movement protests that erupted in Iran in 2009 amid allegations of election fraud shook the Islamic Republic to its core. For the first time in decades, the adoption of serious liberal reforms seemed possible. But the opportunity proved short-lived, leaving Iranian activists and intellectuals to debate whether any path to democracy remained open.

Offering a new framework for understanding democratization in developing countries governed by authoritarian regimes, Democracy in Iran is a penetrating, historically informed analysis of Iran’s current and future prospects for reform. Beginning with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Misagh Parsa traces the evolution of Iran’s theocratic regime, examining the challenges the Islamic Republic has overcome as well as those that remain: inequalities in wealth and income, corruption and cronyism, and a “brain drain” of highly educated professionals eager to escape Iran’s repressive confines. The political fortunes of Iranian reformers seeking to address these problems have been uneven over a period that has seen hopes raised during a reformist administration, setbacks under Ahmadinejad, and the birth of the Green Movement. Although pro-democracy activists have made progress by fits and starts, they have few tangible reforms to show for their efforts.

In Parsa’s view, the outlook for Iranian democracy is stark. Gradual institutional reforms will not be sufficient for real change, nor can the government be reformed without fundamentally rethinking its commitment to the role of religion in politics and civic life. For Iran to democratize, the options are narrowing to a single path: another revolution.

Finding Women in the State is a provocative hidden history of socialist state feminists maneuvering behind the scenes at the core of the Chinese Communist Party. These women worked to advance gender and class equality in the early People's Republic and fought to transform sexist norms and practices, all while facing fierce opposition from a male-dominated CCP leadership from the Party Central to the local government. Wang Zheng extends this investigation to the cultural realm, showing how feminists within China's film industry were working to actively create new cinematic heroines, and how they continued a New Culture anti-patriarchy heritage in socialist film production. This book illuminates not only the different visions of revolutionary transformation but also the dense entanglements among those in the top echelon of the party. Wang discusses the causes for failure of China's socialist revolution and raises fundamental questions about male dominance in social movements that aim to pursue social justice and equality. This is the first book engendering the PRC high politics and has important theoretical and methodological implications for scholars and students working in gender studies as well as China studies.

“This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference.” So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun’s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armée Secrète, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria’s eight-year battle for independence from France. However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could prevent Feraoun’s journal from being published. Journal, 1955–1962 appeared posthumously in French in 1962 and remains the single most important account of everyday life in Algeria during decolonization. Feraoun was one of Algeria’s leading writers. He was a friend of Albert Camus, Emmanuel Roblès, Pierre Bourdieu, and other French and North African intellectuals. A committed teacher, he had dedicated his life to preparing Algeria’s youth for a better future. As a Muslim and Kabyle writer, his reflections on the war in Algeria afford penetrating insights into the nuances of Algerian nationalism, as well as into complex aspects of intellectual, colonial, and national identity. Feraoun’s Journal captures the heartbreak of a writer profoundly aware of the social and political turmoil of the time. This classic account, now available in English, should be read by anyone interested in the history of European colonialism and the tragedies of contemporary Algeria.

Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom--Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.