Say Who You Are, Know Who You're With

It's an important principle for me that in order to work together and be effective in the world, we need to understand as much as we can about how our personal histories and identities affect how we see things, and to share that information with others, so we can be understood in context and our biases can be taken into account.   

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The Historian As Curandera

Having a historical understanding of the present makes everything we do more effective.  It allows us to see the local faces of large patterns of events and causes, and understand how our immediate experiences are connected to those of people who came before us or emerged out of different pasts than our own.  History is also the story we tell about the past to explain the present and imagine the future, a job that can't be left to storytellers with a stake in exploitation.   The Historian As Curandera  talks about my vision of what an activist historian does and why it matters.  (Image by Ricardo Levins Morales.)

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The Power of Art 1: Metaphor As Methodology

Art is one of the most powerful forms of human communication, and persuasion.  It's also a powerful tool of analysis, a way to understand and express complexity, to see connection that might otherwise elude us.  In Art and Science I talk about metaphor as a tool for exploring the world, and the false dichotomies set up between art and science as valid intellectual activities. 

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