2020 Games of the Year

A bizarre year for video games, with the pandemic and everything else going on, the video games industry exploded in revenue as people stayed home. Games took on a new life as some embraced a role as a warm security blanket and others doused the blanket in gasoline. Can’t win them all. Still the face […]

Critical Review: Whitewashed Adobe

Deverell, William. Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2005. In the pages of Whitewashed Adobe’s introduction, author William Deverell sets his foundation explaining to readers the consequential nature of the racial and cultural conflicts found at the heart of […]

Perspectives on Reliance: Explorations of Native America’s Labor in the Fur Trade

Over the years, the historiography of the fur trade has reflected various perspectives on Native American importance. Individual scholars have developed differing insights into the contributions of Native peoples. Some see Native American contributions as secondary. Others see Natives as being crucial players who were necessary to support the existence of the trade. Still, others […]

Critical Review: Custer Died for Your Sins and Survivance

Native American history tells a difficult story that ranges from the great heights of empires to the deep lows of extermination. Despite the toll it has taken, Native American communities have, nonetheless, survived to tell their stories. These stories are acts of survivance. Native Americans seek to not just hold the line on Native survival; […]

Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, and Literary Theory in Orientalism by Edward Said

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York City, NY: Vintage Books, 1979. Early in the 2003 preface of Orientalism, author Edward W. Said states that if it were not for the Orientalist dogma as he describes in the pages that follow, “there would have been no war” in Iraq or Afghanistan.[1] This statement sets a tone […]